Cowabunga! The Doris Duke Theatre’s popular Honolulu Surf Film Festival takes off tonight for a month of in-person screenings, following three years’ hiatus during the pandemic.

For surfers in hot, humid, midsummer doldrums, exacerbated by flat conditions on all shores, this air-conditioned ark that allows us to enjoy the beautiful diversity of waves and riders worldwide has been desperately missed.

This summer’s festival, the 14th, opens with “Searching for Tom Curren,” a 1998 feature film that follows the three-time world champion on a worldwide, five-year, free-surfing odyssey the California native began in 1992.

Pioneer progressive surfer Curren, known as “the sport’s master of style” for his beautiful, fluid, gravity-defying rides, is also a musician and a recluse who will make a rare public appearance after tonight’s 7:30 p.m. screening. He will be joined alongside by Derek Hoffman, the film’s water specialist and camera operator who archives classic surf films and has brought “Searching” back to commemorate its late producer and director, Sonny Miller.

“Tom is naturally quiet and reflective, an introvert, but performing on waves and guitar and vocals are ways he can express himself and communicate,” Hoffman said in an email to the Star-Advertiser.

“I felt like the ’90s was such a competitive decade, so focused on the world pro tour, and Tom Curren was in that first, new wave of surfers who wanted to go around the world in search of perfect waves. Not to win, but as a more introspective and spiritual kind of experience,” said festival director Sarah Fang.

The festival’s principal contemporary feature is “Wade in Water,” which chronicles the history of surfing in Africa and profiles Black surfers today; its director, David Mesfin, will be attending the festival. Also attending will be Jessica Q. Chen, director of “Surf Nation,” which depicts the experiences of children at a Chinese government-run surf camp and is “probably the most interesting film we have,” Fang said, “with a lot of the kids chafing against this rigid pressure to compete and win in the next Olympics surfing event.”

The 2022 short film “Malia,” directed by Morgan Maassen, takes a trip around the world with Hawaiian surfer and Kauai native Malia Manuel, who made her own waveriding pilgrimage after failing to requalify for the women’s world championship tour; “Malia”, in Fang’s opinion, has “beautiful imagery, probably the best-looking film we’re showing this year.”

“Stop Playing with Them” follows two urban Black surfers from Far Rockaway, N.Y., through the waves of Central America. It is a funny, irreverent adventure that flies in the face of the typical “surf bro” surf safari ethos spawned by the “The Endless Summer” in 1966, Fang said.

Fang added that “we are able to look at the colonial-mindset films critically now, and the new films tend to show surf sessions in a more nuanced, sensitive and playful way.”

Which doesn’t mean today’s surf filmmakers don’t show heroic chargers, but nowadays these are likely to include women, such as Emily Erickson, one of the six women pioneers who surfed in January’s Eddie Aikau Big-Wave Invitational. Erickson is profiled with her father, Waimea veteran Roger Erickson, in Keith Malloy’s masterful “Beyond Sunset.”

Also refreshing are self-deprecating, funny takes on day-to-day, anti-heroic surf sessions, including Matt Luttrell and Dave Homcy’s mellow, lyrical “Jocko,” with legendary, transformative North Shore surfer Jock Sutherland, son Gavin Sutherland and Gavin Murai. Lauren Hill’s “The Physics of Noseriding” has its comic pratfalls but “also takes on real world issues, like pay disparity,” Fang said.

For surfboard design nerds, there’s Oahu native Randy Rarick’s “Summer of 1969,” which shows Leah Dawson and Willie Asprey surfing Sunset Point on nine boards, by different makers, dating from that year.

“The Summer of ‘69 was a pivotal year when boards had gone short and everybody was making a similar kind of board,” said Rarick, who co-founded the pro surfing tour with Fred Hemmings in 1976 and directed the Triple Crown of Surfing on Oahu’s North Shore for 38 years.

“I restore boards all the time,” he added, “because the history of our sport is dictated by the boards we rode at that juncture, and design is always evolving, backward and forward in time.”

The festival’s last screening on July 30 will pay homage to veteran Hawaii surfer Joey Cabell.

Multiple generations of surfers are sure to be dancing in the Honolulu Museum of Art courtyard from 5:30 to 9:30 p.m. Saturday, to live music by Landon McNamara, who competed in the Eddie this year, and the Mana Maoli Kupu Collective.

For the full schedule and prices, go to:

https://honolulumuseum.org/theatre/honolulu-surf-film-festival-2023/.