Surfing Between the Border Lines

"Surfing Between the Border Lines" (working title), an independent, feature-length documentary film exploring the growing phenomenon of couchsurfing is currently in pre-production. Three filmmakers and newbie couchsurfers will spend three months couchsurfing the globe while filming their experiences to share with the world. Making use of interviews, found footage, newscasts, and live action sequences, "Surfing" is a film that will take audiences on an epic journey across hemispheres, time zones, and border lines to explore the possibilities of what can happen when strangers meet and decide to be anything but.

Directed by Rachel Evans, a couchsurfing member from Chicago, Illinois, "Surfing" is set to begin filming in late July of 2007. The filmmakers will travel between New Zealand and Iceland and all points in between. This film will mark the entire film crew's inaugural experience with couchsurfing and will not only chronicle their journey but will seek to situate the phenomenon of couchsurfing within modern culture and to dissect its social relevance, causes, and implications for the future and to discover what, if anything, the world at large can learn from this collective of people.

"I'm fascinated with this concept of pay-it-forward social hosting," says Rachel. "That something like this exists against the backdrop of a world in which there is a growing media-supported trend of both personal and national paranoia and in which most people no longer even know the names of their neighbors is supremely interesting to me both as an American and as a member of a rapidly globalizing society."

A website for the film is set to launch in mid July. Until that time, anyone with questions, suggestions, or a wish to donate much needed funds to the film can email Rachel directly through the couchsurfing.com website - her user name is raeevans. Anyone interested in hosting the crew and participating in the film may also contact her through the site.

Rachel Evans