Nicholas Weissman, executive producer of "Havana Libre," joins the podcast to talk about this documentary which follows the trials and travails of a dedicated group of Cuban surfers who try to get their sport officially recognized by their government. Surfing in Cuba exists in this liminal space, neither legal nor quite illegal, haunted by the legacy of "balseros," tens of thousands of whom traversed the 90-mile channel between Cuba and Florida on makeshift rafts.

Francisco ("Frank") and Yaya are the two stars of the documentary, and their charisma carries through the film, as they deal with bureaucrats, regulations and risking everything to compete and participate in surfing events in different countries. When surfing was recognized as an Olympic sport for the Tokyo Games, they see their chance to bring their beloved sport into their homeland, but at great risk to themselves and their families.

The project began with an article in the New York Times about an intrepid group of surfboard shapers making do with ingenuity and craft, including tearing open refrigerator doors to get at the buoyant styrofoam. Corey McLean and Seth Brown, two surfers from Maine, recognized kindred spirits and sought to bring their story to the world.

The film has been accepted into the Santa Barbara Film Festival and will be hitting the festival circuit after a two-year pandemic hiatus. Weissman is an Emmy award-winning documentary filmmaker based in Ojai. He has worked for the New Yorker magazine, the New York Times, PBS, HBO and National Geographic. He won his Emmy for "A Boy Helps a Town Heal," a film he made for Sports Illustration. His most recent feature, "For Ahkeem," about the juvenile justice system in St. Louis, also won much acclaim. His first independent film, "The Minutemen" about border vigilantes, won the Silver Hugo Award at the Chicago International Film Festival.

We did not talk about Duke Kahanamoku, taimen fishing in the headwaters of the Amur River or the Y2K panic.