Albert Falzon (b. 1945), film maker and photographer, was in the Australian army and worked for Australian Surfing World magazine before co-founding the Australian surf magazine Tracks in 1970. He made his film debut with the colour-saturated movie Morning of the Earth (1972), featuring Young and other surfers including champion Michael Petersen. Quickly achieving cult status - which has only increased in recent years - the film combined mind-blowing surf footage from Australia, the USA and Indonesia (the first from that country ever used in a surf movie) with an evocative sound track. Featuring Australian artists, notably Brian Cadd and Tamam Shud, it was the first Australian film soundtrack to achieve gold status. Falzon was also a cinematographer on Crystal Voyager (1972), which further raised the bar for surf documentaries. An avid surfer and traveller himself, he has since made many successful films and documentaries including a twelve-part series on festivals in Sri Lanka, Burma, Ladakh, India and Tibet, and Road to Timbuktu, filmed between Casablanca and the Ivory Coast. One ocean once covered the world - it was the morning of the earth (2003) is a book of his surfing pictures; he is currently working on several other books of his photographs. The Australian Centre for Photography showed Morning of the Earth and Crystal Voyager, along with photographs by Falzon, as part of its Magicians of the Sea exhibition in early 2006. Morning of the Earth has also been screened recently at Screensound.
