September 2024: Sachi Cunningham

Sachi Cunningham (photographer/filmmaker):  Sachi remembers her dad calling her downstairs to watch a PBS documentary featuring Aaron Chang, a water surf photographer, when she was 16 years old. Already having developed a love for water and photography, she was excited and motivated by the realization that doing both simultaneously was possible. 

From that moment on, her journey carried her through many iterations of photography and filmmaking. She apprenticed with a surf photographer in Japan, worked a Hollywood film assistant job, was on Los Angeles Times’ first video team, and taught multimedia journalism at San Francisco State University, amongst other creative and journalistic pursuits. 

On one particularly memorable assignment, she filmed 13 women surfing at Mavericks, some of the world’s most powerful waves, and was instantly inspired. “I saw these women and I was like… this is the story of my career.” 

SheChange is Sachi’s most recent documentary following four of these women big wave surfers over the span of a decade as they used existing laws to create change and gender equality within the sport. Their efforts catalyzed equal pay in the World Surf League, the first US based sports league in history to pay women and men equally.