SANTA CRUZ >> With its abundance of beaches and waves that can reach some pretty large heights, it is no surprise that Santa Cruz has developed its own surfing culture for more than a century. Many surfers have made their names around here, including Shawn “Barney” Barron.

A graduate of Santa Cruz High School, Barron was a particularly innovative surfer who, among other things, created the Barney Roll, a 360-degree roll inside a barrel wave. He died at the age of 44 in 2015 of a ruptured heart brought on by methamphetamine use, the coroner reported at the time.

Barron’s memory lives on in a new documentary “Particle Fever” by former classmate and longtime friend Josh Pomer, which will make its debut at the Rio Theatre Thursday.

Pomer has been making surfing documentaries since high school, and Barron starred in just about all of them.

“He was such a character and just such a positive person that he was so fun to be around,” he said. “As an athlete too, he was super influential and created new surfing maneuvers no one had ever done. Being a surf filmmaker, I just wanted to film him and hang out with him.”

After Barron died, Pomer thought about doing a documentary on his life but felt it was too painful to go through the footage right away. As the years went on, he felt motivated to get the project rolling.

“I thought this would be really cool to share with people that didn’t know Barney,” he said. “He had some bipolar issues, but he was super open about it. I feel like today, everyone’s dealing with different traumas, just with what the world’s been through in the last five years. I thought maybe if I shared his story, it might help people see the brighter side of life because that’s what he did.”

Pomer felt it should be shown in October, ahead of the holidays when people experience seasonal depression, and was still doing some last-minute edits last week ahead of the premiere.

Pomer first became interested in documentary filmmaking when he took Mark Levy’s video production class at Santa Cruz High.

“Video cameras were kind of new,” he said. “They were super bulky and big. For me, I was really into black and white photography and developing my own photos, but the video camera stuff, I could use one from Santa Cruz High and had the class, and my friends were my subjects.”

As it turns out, a lot of Pomer’s friends were great surfers at a time when a lot of big names were coming out of Santa Cruz and putting it in competition with the surf culture of Southern California. It got to a point where Pomer began selling his videos and making bigger documentaries about Santa Cruz’s surf culture. This included “The Westsiders” about the city’s surfing icons and “Discovering Mavericks” about the Half Moon Bay surfing spot with notoriously large waves that was the subject of the Jay Moriarty biopic “Chasing Mavericks.”

As Pomer documented this movement, Barron was present through all of it.

“Barney was always there at the beginning,” he said. “This movie I’m showing on Thursday, it showcases his personality, his surfing, the positive things he did in his life and his art.”

Barron was part of a crew of surfers in the ’90s and early 2000s that pushed a radical form of aerial surfing. Within this, he pulled off what became known as the Barney Roll, which took the concept of skaters maneuvering in a circular pattern inside a pipe and applied that to the water.

“Barney did that standing on a surfboard on a wave, something no one else had done except for him,” said Pomer. “He’s done that a few different times.”

Barron also created a surfing competition where surfers would attempt their best aerial stunts.

“That legitimized the air surfing movement in some ways because before that, it was all about the turns you were doing on the wave,” said Pomer. “People were so inconsistent at the airs that to do airs in a contest was super rare, so to have a whole contest based on aerials the only thing being judged, it was pretty groundbreaking.”

Barron was also well-known for his art, particularly his superhero designs for Buell Wetsuits and his work with the brand Volcom, whose art Pomer described as very punk rock.

“They relied on Barney’s artwork a lot for his advertising, and the style of art that Barney made was something they incorporated into their brand,” he said. “Of course, Volcom became one of the biggest surf companies in the world”

Barron also was about helping others, including volunteering with the Mauli Ola Foundation, which works with children with cystic fibrosis by taking them surfing.

“It loosens the particles in their lungs, and it helps them live longer and breathe easier,” said Pomer. “He dedicated a big part of his life to that cause.”

While it was difficult to look at the footage, Pomer said it was very joyful to see Barron again.

“A lot of the best times in my life were just hanging out with him,” he said. “I loved to film, and he was the guy to film because he was so amazing in the water, but a lot of people are amazing in the water. On land, he was just so fun to be around.”

The screening will feature a raffle, music by Burleigh Skidmore and shirts with Barron’s artwork sold by his sister, Amelia, through her clothing company 9 Barn.

Pomer hopes viewers will see how inspiring Barron was.

“I hope that they’ll be inspired to see some of the joy in the world through Barney,” he said.

The screening of “Particle Fever” is 7:15-8:30 p.m. Thursday at the Rio, 1205 Soquel Ave. Tickets are $10 and can be purchased at EventBrite.com. For more information, go to RioTheatre.com.