Oregon Premiere

How to be free—free from bosses, rent, and red tape: In 1960, Bob and Nancy Griffith set out on their 53-foot sailboat to chase that freedom, literally to the ends of the earth. They spent decades navigating the relentless pull of family and adventure and traveled to some of the most remote places on earth without the aid of GPS, support vessels, or communication with the outside world. Combining recent interviews with exquisite archival 16-millimeter film shot by Nancy on location from Antarctica to Polynesia, Following Seas is not only a story of world records and sailing feats, but of a family driven by self-determination and a dream. 

Director’s Statement: (Tyler J. Kelley)

Nancy Griffith always knew her family was doing something cinema-worthy. From behind her clock-wind Bolex camera, she filmed their lives from the early 1960s to the late 1970s while she and her husband Bob sailed around the world three times, living aboard their 53-foot sailboat, raising three children at sea. In the winter of 2010, I met the Griffiths’ son Robert at a bar in Brooklyn. He said that he had ten DVDs’ worth of footage transferred from 16-millimeter film that his mother had shot while voyaging. I went to his house to watch it and was immediately struck by the beauty and intimacy of the footage. That night I called Araby and said, “We need to make a movie.”