Transcription of Sean Flynn for the show Motion Pictures, #106
Lisa: One of our original Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast shows was about the Camden International Film Festival. We’re now 106 episodes in, and we’ve brought the Camden International Film Festival back to talk to us about what’s been happening recently. Today in the studio, we have with us Caroline von Kuhn, who is the managing director of the Camden International Film Festival and also Sean Flynn, who is the director of the Points North Forum. Thanks for coming in and being with us today.
Caroline: Thanks for having us.
Sean: Thanks.
Lisa: These are impressive titles. I hope I got them correct. I know this is a big part of what you’ve been working on these days.
Sean: Yeah. Always, this time of year I think is when we really start kicking into higher gear. Our big program announcements are coming some time next week. Then, once that programming part of our job is done, then it’s really just about following through and making the event happen. Yeah, a lot of anticipation in the office I should say.
Caroline: Ben and Sean are locking the final program. Sean is working on the Points North Documentary Forum which brings six filmmakers to come pitch their idea of a film, their work in progress film in front of a really high caliber industry that we bring in from New York and LA who beg to return to Camden each year, their film up with the festival, their film up Maine, the experience of it. The next two weeks, they’re kind of locking the final; Ben is locking the films that are playing. It’s an exciting time and it all comes together and then we just get it to happen.
Lisa: Why Maine? There are lots of film festivals out there. I know, Sean, you are from Massachusetts. Caroline, from what I understand, you’re from a lot of different places, but came to Maine. What’s the draw?
Sean: For me, I grew up in Massachusetts, so I’ve always had a little bit of a connection to Maine and New England generally. I spent a lot of summers camping and hiking up here. In my 20s, I got into producing documentaries and I was working for a production company out of Boston called Principle Pictures. I started to make feature length films and toured around the festivals. The first film I worked on premiered at Tribeca Film Festival and went on to screen in a lot of different venues, so it opened me up to this whole world of film festivals generally. At some point, it was actually after that film had its run, I heard about this little festival in a tiny town up in Maine. I heard about it through a lot of other people in the industry. It just had this incredibly good reputation for screening great work, just being in a beautiful place, being a really amazing experience for filmmakers.
It wasn’t too long after that actually that I just met Ben by chance through some mutual friends of ours who are also Maine-based filmmakers. So for a while, it was just kind of Ben and I struck up a friendship. He was living in Summerville at the time, pretty much down the street from where I was. Then, eventually, there came an opportunity. I was transitioning out of my job in this production company. Around the same time, they were looking for somebody to head up the forum aspect of the festival. It was an ideal fit and I just jumped right into it. That was a little over two years ago.
For me, my relationship with Maine has really deepened through working for the festival. Each summer, I’ve been coming up for more and more and spending more time here, getting to know the community more. Having been to a lot of festivals around the world, it’s an ideal location in a lot of ways. For the filmmakers and for us as festival organizers, the community is so incredibly supportive. It’s just such a spectacularly beautiful place. You’ve got great venues. You’ve got great culture that kind of surrounds the festival. In some ways, I think our jobs are easy compared to a lot of festival programmers because we have such great resources at our disposal. I really fell in love with the area much more so in the last few years.
We’ve said this in other interviews. This festival would not have reached the heights and that reputation that it has acquired in the film industry if it wasn’t for the support of the community and the area itself.
Caroline: I strongly agree with that. My day job was with the Tribeca Film Festival and I was assistant directing theater on the side and I did a production of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler located in Australia who’s from Camden. We’ve hit it off. He’s the director. I went to the Middle East to produce for Tribeca in Doha, Qatar. When I came back, Caitlin had dinner with about there were six women who had all worked together and said let’s make a movie in Maine. I said no, I’m a theater person. I don’t want to make this sort of film, and then I had two more drinks and agreed to make a film with her. We started off, we just wanted to teach ourselves filmmaking and we knew that we would do it in Maine. I knew of Camden because my mother had studied at the Maine Photographic Workshops at the time, now Maine Media Workshops. I knew the area just through that and having visited.
When we would set out to be just a small short film where we taught ourselves this craft which we knew from other areas, not as director or writers, coming to Camden and the generous, smart community that really allowed us to make a film and for it to evolve into this feature film that it did. I could not have directed my first feature anywhere else. Also, just the cinematic beauty that was at our disposal. I would have to mess up pretty badly to at least not have a beautiful film if nothing else. The sophisticated, smart, local audience made me understand why Camden International Film Festival which I had heard about through Tribeca and Film Society work had the reputation that it did.
In the spring when I was at Tribeca before I came up here when producers and distributors asked, what are you doing after the festival? I very sheepishly because I was very naïve and not qualified to say I was making a film, but they are making a film in Maine and they say “you must meet Ben Fowlie. You have to know about CIFF”. His reputation grew infinitely. Then, when I came up the next year to attend the festival as an audience member and to really experience the Points North Documentary Forum, it exceeded every very high expectation that I had. I feel lucky to be able to join Ben and Sean in that.
Lisa: Caroline, how can people find out about engagement, about the Points North Forum, about the Camden International Film Festival in its entirety?
Caroline: Please visit our website at camdenfilmfest.org. You can find the lineup of films and all the industry delegates who are coming. We have really exciting panels going on this year, really exciting conversations with leaders coming from all over. Get your passes and come join us next weekend.
Lisa: It’s been a pleasure to speak with the two of you, esteemed managing director of the Camden International Film Festival, Caroline von Kuhn, and also Sean Flynn, director of the Points North Forum with the Camden International Film Festival. Thank you for spending time with me today.
Caroline: Thank you so much for having us.
Sean: Thanks so much.