X-Dance: Riding a wave out of poverty and despair

While Sundance and Slamdance draw big-name stars this week, one festival will have a connection the others can't claim.
    Russell Crowe will make his directorial debut later this year when he helms a movie about the Bra Boys, the legendary Australian surf tribe. He was attracted to the subject by "The Bra Boys," a documentary he narrates that is making its North American premiere Saturday at Salt Lake City's X-Dance Action Sports Film Festival.
    "The Bra Boys" is about a controversial, close-knit group of friends who used surfing to lift them out of poverty and despair.
    "It's not the typical action-sports film, which a lot of time is what we call 'action porn,' " said Brian Wimmer, X-Dance festival director. "It's got a story line, a heart."
    A heart is what the Bra Boys are often accused of not having, said Sunny Abberton, the film's director, a professional surfer and co-founder of the Bra Boys with his brothers Koby and Jai Abberton.
    The media has characterized the Bra Boys a violent gang, but Abberton disagrees.
    "It's like a tribe, a community," he said. "It's not a crime syndicate."
    The Abberton boys were born into a poor family and looked for a way out, he said. That way was the beach.
    "Our parents were heroin addicts," Abberton said. "Nine out of 10 of our friends were. The people on the beaches clothed and fed us. It's a big brotherhood, a family."
    Fellow Australian Crowe was recruited as a way to get the film into the mainstream.
    "One of the Bra Boys played on [Crowe's] first-grade football team," Abberton said. When Crowe heard they were interested in having him on board, he called Koby three times. Each time, Koby thought it was a prank, Abberton said.
    The 78-minute film was released in Australia last year and became the country's highest-grossing non-IMAX documentary of all time. The film is set to be released in America in March.