User:Crtew/Sachi Cunningham

Sachi Cunningham, born in (ca. 1973 – ), is an award winning American multimedia journalist, filmmaker, photographer and is currently the Assistant Professor of Multimedia Journalism at San Francisco State University., Cunningham is most well-known for her big wave surf photography.

Personal
Sachi Cunningham is from San Francisco. Cunningham grew up around water because her grandparents rented a beach house on Capistrano Beach every summer. She first began swimming at the age of four and would swim competitively from age seven through college. Cunningham studied filmmaking at Brown University and then went on to study under Jon Else at the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley. She is married to her husband Zachary Slobig who is also a journalist. Cunningham's mother, who was born in an internment camp in Arizona during World War II, died from ovarian cancer at age 49 when Cunningham was only 19. Cunningham herself being at such high risk for breast and ovarian cancer, 90 and 60 percent respectively, had a double mastectomy and a total hysterectomy in 2015 as preventative measures. Around July of 2016 Cunningham was diagnosed with fallopian tube cancer. Her love for the waves helped her battle through chemo. Her name, Sachi means "happiness" in Japanese. Sachi and her husband have a daughter Nami.

Career
After graduating from Brown in December of 1994, Cunningham lived in Japan where she taught English in Kyushyu. It was in Japan at the age of 23 that she bought her first camera. In 1997-98 while traveling in Indonesia, Cunningham discovered her love for water photography. It was at that time, that she made the switch from feature filmmaking to documentary film as she worked as an assistant to the director on the film "Bandits". She worked in the Hollywood film industry for ten years.

After graduating from UC Berkeley in 2005, Cunningham worked for the PBS international news documentary program Frontline/World until 2007. In 2008 Cunningham was hired by the Los Angeles Times where she worked for three years. In 2011 she applied for a tenure track position in the journalism department at San Francisco State University.

Cunningham is intrigued by large, powerful waves because there are less people out there. In her opinion, the biggest challenge in shooting big surf is mentally keeping your cool, and being in top fitness. ref name=surfline>

Notable Works
Cunningham edited the documentary Elwha Unplugged which is a "profile of an 80-year-old fisherman who is largely responsible for the Elwha River restoration project in Washington State.

Chasing the Swell is a surf video that "follows the great avalanche rides of the world's top big wave chargers as they chase the 2010 winter swells from Hawaii to California and Mexico." The Los Angeles Times produced this film. Endless Ocean, also known as "Mark Sem Fim," is a short film that debuted in 2014. The film follows the Medieros family as the first surfers on the Azores Islands. While filming this she was able to surf one of the first World Surfing Reserves, this is a "Save the Waves program that proactively identifies, designates, and preserves outstanding waves, surf zones, and their surrounding environments globally." When Cunningham was in graduate school for journalism, she intended to find an environmental story about the ocean that would allow her to shoot video in the water. It Ain't Pretty is a documentary that follows women big wave surfers.

Sachi has been working on documentary specifically focusing on female big wave surfers entitled She Change, ever since the success of Chasing the Swell. The first event to include female big wave surfers was the Pe'ahi Women's Challenge. In this documentary the females "secure pay equity in the sport of surfing—the first US based international sports league to do so in history." Another work is Women Who Surf.

CRUTCH is a film about an artist with a hip disability who performs "a hybrid of break-dancing, skateboarding and performance art. Sachi has made two other videos that do not involve surfing. One was about an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and a shrimper, Phan Plork from Buras, Louisiana helped BP clean it up. The second video was about a 16 year old girl, Abby Sunderland, who was from Thousand Oaks, California; and she tried to "non-stop solo circumnavigate the globe in her sailboat Wild Eyes." "Mavericks: Everest of the Sea" is a photo exhibition.

Impact
Cunningham has been a pioneer in water photography ever since she made a name for herself as a water photographer at Ocean Beach around 2011. .

Awards
She has made a name for herself with many award winning documentaries, despite battling cancer.


 * 2017 Wave Saver Athlete of the Year. This award does not have a distinct description as it is not an award that you can sign up and compete for. To Cunningham this award means "I'm an athlete who has shown sports(wo)manship in and out of the water and have applied sports(wo)manlike ways towards working to conserve our collective coastal environment." She has also been award the "Most Awesomest Filmmaker" by this group. She has won Emmy's for her work, and her works have appeared on Frontline, the New York Times and Discovery Channel.