VIDEO: Maui’s Matt Meola Wins $100,000 Surf Video Contest

Matt Meola accepting the $100,000 check from Innersection DVD producers Taylor Steele and Nathan Myers at the DVD release party last week. Photo courtesy of Nathan Myers, Innersection. Photographer Todd Glaser.

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By Sonia Isotov

21 year old, Matt Meola, a Maui Boy from Kuau, and one of surfing’s hottest rising stars, recently won the Innersection Free Surfing Video Contest netting $100,000.

The final video submission, filmed and directed by Maui filmmaker Elliot Leboe of ACL Digital Cinema, features Matt Meola in 3.5 minutes of action-packed surf footage. It follows Meola as he travels in his truck through Maui sugar cane fields down to his favorite breaks, like Hookipa and Windmills. It also features Meola surfing breaks in Indonesia and Mexico, too.

“Right now I just want to travel, find new surf breaks and make great surf videos with my new sponsor Oxbow,” said Matt Meola told Maui Now. “I’ll be working on a new Innersection video this year, too.”

The Innersection Surf Video Contest takes a unique approach to creating surf videos by bringing together surfers (working with filmmakers and editors) who create their own 2-3 minute surf movie and compete to be one of 24 final edits that makeup the final surf movie produced by Innersection. The competition runs in four cycles throughout the year (every two months, starting March 1st), and each round qualifies five new surfers for the final DVD released in December 2011 this year.

The general public judges these sections to determine which ones are included in the final surf movie being put together by surf movie

Matt Meola shows the crowd his $100,000 Innersection Surf Video Contest winnings. Photo courtesy of Innersection; photographer Todd Glaser.

producer Taylor Steele, and co-producer Nathan Myers, and the most popular video section win the $100,000. Matt Meola’s video section won the 2010 contest, also making him the first Innersection winner, since this is the inaugural year for the contest.

Innersection’s second year begins April 1. For more information on the contest, check out innersection.tv.