Still Catching Waves--on Film : Surfing: Chris Bystrom, 44, has influenced a legion of enthusiasts since his first movie in the 1970s.

Like many artists, movie maker Chris Bystrom believes in sacrifice--real renunciation.

So Bystrom quits surfing for months at a time.

The 44-year-old travels to exotic beaches around the world making documentaries about surfing. But as he peers through his camera lens to film the best waves, he often battles the urge to wax down his surfboard and paddle out for a ride.

It may not be a diet of bread and water, but for a lifelong surfer it’s a tough call.

“That’s why I made such crummy films,” Bystrom says of the first few movies he made in the 1970s. “I was always surfing when the waves were at their best.”

Over the years, Bystrom’s movies improved and inspired legions of South Bay surfers. Many trekked to the Bijou Twin Theatres in Hermosa Beach to study the sport’s latest, most radical moves and raced a couple blocks to the beach to test their mettle.

Bystrom, who grew up riding waves off Redondo Beach, often leaves his surfboard behind when he heads for the shores to film surfers. His 20th film, “Full Cycle,” was recently released on video.

With its images of graceful surfers gliding effortlessly on long, rolling waves, the film is a far cry from Bystrom’s first few movies, which featured mostly poorly shaped waves crashing along San Diego beaches.

But Bystrom makes no apologies for the quality of his early films or his penchant for surfing instead of filming when the waves reached their peak.

“My idea of life was being retired until you’re 35, and when your body starts to age more, then you start to work,” says Bystrom, who lives and surfs on the Gold Coast of Australia.

Until he reached his early 30s, Bystrom lived in quasi-retirement. In the late 1960s, he acted in “Viet Rock,” a Hermosa Beach interactive play in which peace activists shook audience members violently and demanded that they protest the Vietnam War.

Then he moved to San Diego after two years of college and sold used records out of the trunk of his 1955 Pontiac. He spent countless hours along the shores of Ocean Beach, where he cruised the waves on his wax-covered, single-fin surfboard.

Bystrom remembers those years as carefree, but he “had an artistic streak not being fulfilled by the bohemian lifestyle,” he says.

So while living in a San Diego garage in the early 1970s, Bystrom scraped together $500 to buy a small, secondhand movie camera, which he used to film crushing waves on a trip down the Mexican coast. At the urging of friends, he began filming surfers throughout Southern California.

In time, the surf movies “became a form of artistic expression,” he says.

Bystrom bought a better camera and soon began showing his films in school auditoriums and small theaters around the state, where he provided live narration. But it was often difficult to make ends meet.

When schools refused to charge admission and instead solicited donations, Bystrom says he “made sure I had the biggest and meanest-looking guy at the door to make sure everybody pitched in.”

In 1983, he released “Blazing Boards” to auditoriums of screaming surf fans. The film attracted 1,800 people to the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium.

“He had the best guys in the world on film,” says Dickie O’Reilly, 21, a Manhattan Beach surfer who was 10 when he first saw the movie. O’Reilly now works at Spyder Surfboards in Hermosa Beach.

“We’ve sold tons of his movies over the years,” he says.

Bystrom says he has sold 1,000 copies of his latest release, which retails for $35. He says that with the profits from the movie he’ll have time to relax with his wife and 4-year-old son before he begins his next project.

He plans to produce an Australian television show about surfing. And, when the waves roll into the Gold Coast in November, Bystrom says he will leave his camera behind and surf the curling waves until the swells retreat in April.