Last fall you published a letter from me thanking our Island community for their support of the American Heroes Fishing Challenge. Now in its fifth year and organized by the Nixon family and Beach Plum Inn, the heroes challenge is a tournament within the Annual Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby.

Last fall a group of nine soldiers arrived in Menemsha to compete in the Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby.

For Doug Liman, directing is like navigating a class five river rapid. As you see the rapid in the distance, you have 15 seconds to figure out the best course of action. There’s no time to stop and think about it; you must act on impulse. He has the same experience showing up on the set of one of his film or television shows.

It was a time before Rip Curl or Billabong, a time before Gidget, before Frankie > (Avalon) and Annette (Funicello) or Beach Blanket Bingo. In the early 1960s, surfing was still considered a cult sport, limited to beach bums in Southern California and Hawaii.

The Vineyard may yet be the scene of another big fish film under the eye of Steven Spielberg: the Jaws director’s studio, DreamWorks, has just bought the film rights for a soon to be released book about the Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby.

The book, The Big One: An Island, an Obsession and the Furious Pursuit of a Great Fish, by David Kinney, published by Atlantic Monthly, will be released on April 8.

Surfwise is only a surfing film in the same way that its central character Dorian (Doc) Paskowitz is, as he puts it, a “Jewish surfer.”

In fact Mr. Paskowitz is a Stanford-educated doctor who refused to send any of his nine children to school; an individualist who led his children each morning in a rendition of Chairman Mao’s March of the Volunteers; and a professed good husband and good father, who pursued his own dream with his family in tow. He also happens to surf.

You will not experience a more independent film at the Martha’s Vineyard Film Festival than Surfwise, a 93-minute recounting of the Paskowitz family saga. See it.

By turns hilarious and horrific, the film chronicles the 50-year social experiment of a surfing Jewish family.

How to Save the World last month won the award for best nonbroadcast film at the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival, an international event where other winners came from the BBC, Animal Planet and the Discovery Channel. Tonight, the awardwinning documentary about biodynamic farming will be broadcast — premiering on MVTV.

The filmmakers were on the Island last month to interview Vineyard author William E. Marks for their next film, which is about water. Mr. Marks facilitating the right to screen the film, which begins tonight at 8 p.m.

New Hampshire advertising agency executive David Flood has produced a documentary on Vineyard life and the Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby.

The hour-long color film, Feeding the Water, will premiere today at 7 p.m. on MVTV and will run on the station through the remainder of the derby. Mr. Flood filmed for five weeks during the 2006 derby.