Welcome to the most beautiful cinema in the world

What a beautiful Cape Town evening for the surf film at Clifton 4th Beach last night, writes Wavescape technical dude Paul van Jaarsveld, who lives in J-Bay, and gives us a fresh perspective on a magical evening.

Cape Town was windy last night with a strong SSE tearing up the deep south, winding around Camps Bay and working up a temper for a gale force blow on the weekend.

When I got to Clifton 4th beach I was surprised by the total lack of wind, but not the Wavescapes guys. Spike had forecast an epic evening and we were all cautiously optimisitc.

The word was obviously out (Wavescape, Twitter, Facebook, mobile phones, local radio), and people arrived with picnics from around 5pm. By 7pm the beach had filled up and by 8pm finding a parking spot was like trying to find a wave in Cape Town this summer.

As the sun dipped behind the boulders Chris Mason thanked our friends and sponsors and then Sam Owen from the Save Our Seas Foundation gave an impassioned conservation message to an appreciative audience. At 9am we started our film "The Present", a classic surf documentary by Thomas Campbell.

One of the opening scenes features a barrel ride in Indonesia that is one of the longest rides I have seen. The stoked crowd of thousands hooted and cheered and a few surf starved ours started frothing at the mouth in desperation. A hilarious scene in the film called "Express Your Inner Monkey" had a few mullets competing for the craziest skit on a wave and the crowd was rolling around in the sand laughing their heads off.

It was a perfect evening and there was a great, peaceful vibe. It was amazing to see how our common love for surfing and the ocean unites us and it all came together just perfectly at the most beautiful cinema in the world on Friday night.

This post originally published on the Wavescape site.