Film Is A Dream Come True For Local Director

Under the water is a perfect, serene world beautifully depicted in Jim Sugar's Swimming in a Dream.

"It's a positive addiction. It makes me feel strong and light and smooth," one swimmer told Sugar. You're almost levitated or transformed into somewhere else. You're in what I think of as a inner space. The hypnotic sound of the rhythm of the breathing, the rhythm of the strokes, it's a very spectacular sensation."

A member of the North Bay Aquatics Masters group, Sugar turned the camera on himself and his fellow swimmers to produce the short film that has its Mill Valley Film Festival debut tonight at 5 p.m. at the Sequoia Theater. There will be another showing Friday at 5 p.m. at the Rafael Film Center.

"I swim because I need to do it to keep from going crazy," said Sugar, a Mill Valley filmmaker and photographer.

The Masters swimmers brave cold, dark mornings five days a week to dive into the Redwood High School pool at 5:30 a.m. for a 3,000-yard workout.

"It's a transformative experience. It takes me to another place," Sugar said. "The feeling I get from swimming gets rid of the darkness in my life."

Whether it's stress from work, from home or the commute between the two, all of it disappears after a few warmup laps.

"You hop in, you start out a little slow, then once things start to kick in and you start to loosen up, before you know it bubbles are rushing behind you and you're swimming strong. It feels good," as one swimmer puts it in the film.

These aren't high school or college swimmers training for a big meet. They can be competitive, however. Three Masters members, all mothers, entered the Ironman Triathlon this year. Another member, Steve Clark, was a three-time gold medalist at the 1964 Olympics.

"I wanted to make one really great film," Sugar said. "This story comes together because it was meant to to be. The film becomes a living creature that screams to get done. It won't let go of you."

"I had to tell the story of why we swim and get up at 5:30 in the morning," he continued. "As it goes along, the film develops its own vitality and reality."

Sugar, still riding the "swimmer's high" after practice, couldn't disguise his passion for the project and the friends who helped make it possible.

"There were challenges," said Sugar, who filmed at the pool over the course of a week. "There were times when I wasn't sure it was going to work, when I wanted to give up, but the film wouldn't let me."

Sugar recruited four local filmmakers to help him in his quest: Bill Holshevnikoff, Mike Russell and Kim Komenich. Everything came together when Bill Pekala loaned a Nikon D3s DSLR camera to Sugar and his cronies.

"I've been going to the Mill Valley Film Festival for years and years but always as a still photographer," he said. "I wanted to have a film in the Mill Valley Film Festival, it was sort of a bucket list item of mine. The circumstances never presented themselves until now. It all came together for the film to be made. All the parts were there. It was all about doing it because it had to get done."

And what do a bunch of filmmakers and hardcore swimmers do to celebrate? Head on over to local landmark the 2am Club for drinks and have dinner catered by Joe's Taco Lounge.

"The story was there. All we had to do was listen to it. It was amazing working with these guys," Sugar said. "It was a spiritual experience, with just the joy and purity of doing it."