On a summer evening in February 1972, two men stood in huddled conversation outside the Manly Silver Screen cinema. One a surfer and filmmaker, Alby Falzon. The other a musician, G Wayne Thomas.

Inside the cinema, an audience had just begun watching a film they had conspired against considerable odds to create. It was called Morning of the Earth.

Made on a modest budget, the major cinema chains had refused to show it.

So Falzon backed his vision, hiring the theatre at Manly himself.

Thomas staked his reputation on a soundtrack that didn't just provide music but created a commentary with a revolutionary message - "turn on, tune in and surf".

Both were so nervous about how the film might be received that they hopped in a car and drove to nearby North Head to relieve the tension.

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So what they didn't see that night was the crowd's stunned reaction to a movie that wouldn't simply become a surf classic but a cultural statement; a call to arms, capturing an ideal way of living.

Since that time, the reputation of Morning of the Earth has grown.

Its message of living a simple life and surfing, while protecting the environment, would resonate across the globe.

In the years that followed, many have tried to capture its spirit and copy its format. None have achieved its impact.

Now, filmmaker, musician and surfer Andrew Kidman has attempted what many consider an impossible task - to create a film in homage to the original.

He's called it Spirit of Akasha.

So why did he do it and why now?

According to Kidman, Chris Moss from Heritage Surf had been making regular calls to him over the years, asking whether he'd consider making a film and a soundtrack to tap the spirit of Morning of the Earth.

Kidman's answer was emphatic: "Not possible!"

"How could you do it? It was a classic," he said.

Moss wouldn't let up. More phone calls followed. The answer remained "no!"

Finally Falzon, sitting at his country home on the north coast of New South Wales, rang Kidman. His rationale was simple. If the values that informed Morning of the Earth were real, wasn't it possible to do a modern day equivalent?

As Kidman told me recently, at this point a light went on.

"I realised it would be possible to do a film that, if you like, did a score card, an assessment of what Morning of the Earth had been about," he said.

"A film that asked honestly 'were the values expressed in the original film still alive?'

"If we did it though, it had to be honest. I told Warners, the film's backers, that if the values weren’t there, I had to be able to say so. That was the only way. They agreed absolutely."

Host of top-line musicians line up to be involved

Xavier Rudd is among the musicians who lined up to be involved. ( Supplied )

That was just the beginning. How would he make the film and a soundtrack - and how would he deal with the inevitable pressure?

"No pressure," Kidman tells me.

"I spread the pressure, if you like.

"What I wanted to do was to get other people (filmmakers and musicians) to contribute their take on the project."

As he tells it, people lined up to be involved, including a host of top-line musicians like Xavier Rudd, Angus Stone and Grouplove, along with Kidman's own band The Windy Hills and former pro surfer Tom Curren.

Nevertheless, Kidman had to block out the idea and make it coherent. Again he was innovative.

Classic image... surfer Michael Peterson performs a cutback in Morning of the Earth. ( www.albertfalzon.com )

"For example, I got Kye and Joel Fitzgerald, the sons of Morning of the Earth star Terry Fitzgerald, to go to Tahiti and surf the reefs," he said.

"I asked the best underwater photographer in the world to film them.

"When they came back, some people said we didn't get any good footage.

"What I was doing was getting John Frank to shoot a fish's eye view of them. It's so beautiful."

In the original film, one of the most celebrated sequences was surfer Michael Peterson riding the waves at Kirra Beach on Queensland's Gold Coast.

Kirra is a surfing miracle. Perfect tubes running for hundreds of yards along a fickle sandbank.

Kidman decided to get a single-fin surfboard like Peterson's original and ask five-time women's world champion Stephanie Gilmore to ride it at Greenmount, just round the corner from Kirra, while he filmed.

Miraculously, but perhaps not surprisingly, Gilmore began to surf and draw lines on the wave like Peterson did 40 years ago. The circle had been closed.

'I'd be out there in big surf and there he was ... who is he?'

Korean-born Sam, who lives at nearby Tugun, is central to the film. ( Supplied )

But even this doesn't create a film with characters and its own story to tell.

Kidman though found the solution one day riding big waves, when he noticed a surfer who he would come to know as Sam.

"The central character in this film is a Korean-born guy, Sam," he said.

"He was this guy who kept turning up in unusual places.

"I'd be out in big surf and there he was. I thought who is he?"

Kidman found out he lived at Tugun on the Gold Coast, under the flight path of the airport.

He has a family and manages to grow all his own vegetables.

He earns a living cleaning offices and toilets, if he has to.

At this point Kidman's voice takes on a mixture of intensity and wonder; "an Asian guy who exemplifies all the elements of Morning of the Earth, the desire to live a sustainable life and put aside so many things, so that he can surf."

So where have the values of Morning of the Earth fallen away?

Kidman pauses ... and then begins.

"Well, we have shots of high-rises reflecting in the wave face as guys surf at the Gold Coast. That says a lot," he said.

Bali though, according to Kidman, was the litmus test.

The original film had exposed Bali as the paradise that surfers would ultimately help to devastate.

"We had to go back to Bali," he said.

"The original film had some heavy scenes in it; the cock-fight where Balinese gamble on one rooster killing another; drugs on the beach and the hammerhead shark being hauled out of the water by fishermen."

His voice trails off.

"But this was an honest snapshot of the place at that time.

"People said we could just film the development going on at Uluwatu", where the surf culture has led a developmental explosion destroying the Morning of the Earth idyll that was Bali.

Instead, Kidman's filming focused on the east side of the island showing the next stage of the development explosion.

The picture isn't pretty.

"You see the impact of development. It's just full on," he said.

Balancing images and music was the key

Andrew Kidman said he only agreed to make the film because the values expressed in the original were still alive. ( Supplied )

But as Kidman knows, you don't have to go to Bali to see the friction between the environment and the desire to develop and make money.

Just up the beach from Kirra that Peterson made famous, developers are proposing a massive marina that would potentially impact significantly on the coastline and the sand that's such a vital part of making Gold Coast beaches so famous.

As Kidman explains "this isn't a current affairs film. It's images and it's songs.

"So balancing images and music to make a point was the key."

A key moment comes when Kidman shows Kirra as a love song plays.

"It's a song to a girl, but in this case it's a song to Kirra, the place and the wave," he explains.

Finally, I ask Kidman the question I perhaps should have started with - what's Akasha?

"Akasha is the life force that binds the other four elements - wind, earth, fire and water - together," Kidman said.

As it happens, Akasha is also the element that carries the imprint of the past - including the original film. Perfect!

Will people respond to Spirit of Akasha?

Like Albie Falzon 40 years ago, Kidman will find out when the surfing tribes gather this week to see the film for the first time and then to hear a live concert of the soundtrack.

If he's worried about their verdict, he doesn't show it.

As Falzon, a man Kidman sees as a mentor said recently: "Whatever you love to do, just do it. That's all there is.

"Surely the world would be a better place if we all did the things we loved."

Andrew Kidman has certainly done that.

And it's hard to imagine the world won't be taken in by the spirit of this film.

Spirit of Akasha will premiere on Saturday, January 25 at the Sydney Opera House, where there will also be a live performance of songs from the soundtrack.