Jack Johnson considered naming the upcoming documentary SURFILMUSIC something more along the lines of “Make Stuff.” Those words stuck out to him as he and longtime friend and collaborator Emmett Malloy (director of Big Easy Express and The White Stripes Under Great White Northern Lights) compiled footage of Johnson’s life from his first steps to losing his front teeth in the water at Pipeline to becoming a household name through his music.
“You know how many mornings Emmett had to wake up to a text being like, ‘Why would I want to put a film out about me?’” Johnson jokes days before the 75-minute film is set to debut at Austin’s SXSW on March 13. The documentary unfolded from Johnson and Malloy combing through old footage as they prepared for the re-release of their surf films Thicker Than Water and September Sessions.
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“The more we started watching, the story kept unfolding that was just about a bunch of friends making things together and the story that collaborating sometimes is where the strength is and seeing things in each other before you see them in yourselves,” Johnson tells Billboard.
SURFILMUSIC, directed by Malloy, begins with a flip book drawing of a surfer catching a wave – a childhood drawing of Johnson’s. According to the musician, it’s the first piece of art he can remember making and sets up the film for an hour plus of Johnson, Malloy and their friends, including pro surfer Kelly Slater, as they grow up in Hawaii. Through interviews and unearthed footage, the film traces Johnson’s professional surfer days to his award-winning film career and finally as a globally renowned musician and activist.
The film is an ideal centerpiece for the 40th anniversary of SXSW that kicks off today (March 12) with an abbreviated timeline. For the first time in the music, film and tech festival’s history, all three verticals will be running at the same time due to the renovation of the Austin Convention Center. With the music and film verticals overlapping, musicians are able to screen their film during the day and perform later in the evening for both the film and music fans and critics.
Johnson will screen SURFILMUSIC and perform alongside Hermanos Gutiérrez that evening at Stubb’s. And Johnson is not the only artist taking advantage of the overlap.
Noah Kahan, Charley Crockett, Lainey Wilson, Los Lobos and early 2000s girl group X-Cetra will also screen films at the festival. For Kahan (Out of Body), Crockett (A Cowboy in London) and Wilson (Keepin’ Country Cool), their films showcase their recent rise to global success, while, Johnson, Los Lobos (Los Lobos Native Sons) and X-Cetra (Summer 2000: The X-Cetra Story) serve as career retrospectives.
“Having these documentaries come out earlier in their careers,” SXSW vp of music Brian Hobbs says, gives these artists “an opportunity to get on a massive stage and pull the curtain back a little bit to show people who they really are.”
“This is the largest number of films that are coordinating with a performance that we’ve had in the 21 years I’ve been here,” says SXSW vp of film and TV Claudette Godfrey, who adds that the film and music segments of the festival always try to overlap as much as possible. But, Godfrey explains, the film portion is also about discovery and half the films screen feature first time directors.
While big names are attached to several of the films this year, the music and film crossovers were not selected just for the star power. “I want to feel that I got that behind the scenes, backstage pass of it all,” says Godfrey. “I don’t want it to feel super vanity or this is ‘this is me showcasing everything in the best possible light.’ I want it to feel more encompassing.”
For Hobbs, landing the Crockett and Wilson documentaries, along with their showcase performances, was especially important for this year’s festival.
“It was on our vision board for SXSW 2026, ‘We got to get more country music out here,’” Hobbs says. While country music is a dominant genre in Texas, Hobbs believes SXSW has not been at the forefront of country upstarts and credits music programmer Berkli Johnson with strengthening the genre’s presence.
This year’s focus on country music “is going to do what happened with hip-hop out here after Jay-Z and Kanye [West] stamped SXSW was a thing for hip-hop, then hip-hop really took over,” Hobbs says. “Peso Pluma and Grupo Frontera really stamped it for Latin music and now our Latin music has been going crazy. I’m really hoping that we’ll see the same thing happen with country music after this year.”
