Kook Paradise

From breath-taking beach yoga warm-ups to artistic board decorations and wipe-outs on mammoth 2ft swells, Danny DiMauro and Tin Ojeda show up the hype surrounding New York’s version of Malibu in their new film Kook Paradise. Shot on an old camcorder on Ditch Plains Beach in Montauk, the short plays on the aesthetics of 1960’s surfploitation films and pokes fun at a modern beachtown with surf fever. “Both of us are pranksters always playing jokes on one another down at the beach,” explains DiMauro. Known for its bohemian and unpretentious atmosphere, Montauk has been the choice destination for artists escaping the city since Andy Warhol, photographer Peter Beard and The Rolling Stones discovered the spot in the sixties. Recently, the town has become the epicenter of the East Coast’s surfing boom, with ‘kooks’—poor surfers who don’t really know what they’re doing, especially those new to the sport—descending on the area in droves. DiMauro teamed up with artist Tin Ojeda, known for his Drugmoneyart T-shirt line, to capture the ensuing comedy in a photo ‘zine. “We kept getting caught taking photos of people, so Tin decided to remedy the problem by using an old camcorder he had,” explains DiMauro. “When we watched the tape, there was so much hilarity that we decided to make a film to document everything we see on a daily basis.”

Kook Paradise premieres at the New York Surf Film Festival on September 19 and 20.