Fiona Laughlin, one of the head coaches of Total Immersion Swimming (www.totalimmersion.net) began a project directing a documentary film that follows a group of swimmers over the course of a year as they swim the longest open water marathon swimming races in the world. These swimmers are unique in that they are a core group from Total Immersion Swimming, the world’s leading swimming improvement method. Along this open water swimming journey we watch these swimmers teach swimming at Total Immersion open water workshops and we learn about the philosopy, the technique and most importantly the transformative impact that this particular form of “being one with the water” swimming has on people. We follow the swimmers as they swim races that vary from 9 miles (the Maui Channel) to marathon swims up to 21- 24 miles (the Tampa Bay Marathon and the English Channel)
One of the swimmers featured in the film is Fiona’s father, founder of Total Immersion and famous swimming technique expert Terry Laughlin. Terry is known for his highly influential and revolutionary books, classes, videos, etc that promote a philosophy of holistic, efficient mastery of swimming skills and cultivating a zen-like mentality in the process.
The film is not only about the swimming but is also full of beautiful cinematography shot in locations such as the Virgin Islands, Hawaii, Tampa, the Catalina Channel, (and hopefully the English Channel if we raise enough funds to shoot there), and is also about the culture of open water swimming, the characters, the philosophy, the mindset of the individuals that undertake these feats, and the personal story of this family of swimmers… their triumphs as well as their setbacks they travel to these various locations to teach swimming, to influence people’s lives, and set out on these incredible long distance races.
At present Fiona is independently working to finish this film without any funding, and needs to raise about $5000 to fly to the UK and bring on one assistant to film the final swim which is a solo English Channel crossing. Both the filmmaker and the swimmer are on solo missions as of now to complete their respective tasks. The swim will take place around the last week of August/first week of September so funds need to be raised very quickly in order to finish the project. I will be starting a blog that follows the rest of production where you can follow our progress and will post photos and video there as well.
- Important note: although TI swimmers are featured in this film, this film is an independent project of Fiona Laughlin, NOT a Total Immersion Inc production, is not being funded by TI and is intended as an art film, NOT a commercial for TI. *