Transcription of Ben Fowlie for the show Abundance #10
Dr. Lisa: Today on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast, we have two very special guests with us, one of whom has driven a bit of a distance to be here. I met both of these individuals several weeks ago in Camden as part of a few events that were quite exciting and interesting, considering this is Midcoast Maine. So I can’t wait to have Genevieve Morgan interview them as part of Maine Magazine Minutes, Jonathan Laurence and Ben Fowlie.
Genevieve: Hi there, guys.
Jonathan: Hello.
Ben: Hello.
Genevieve: I’m thrilled to meet you. Actually I’m meeting you for the first time here, but I’ve been reading about you in the Maine Magazine for about two years, because we’ve been following you closely. I’m going to read to our listeners a little bit about you, because it’s sort of unbelievable how much you’ve managed to accomplish in your brief 30 years on the planet, but here it goes.
Ben, you are the founder and director of the Camden International Film Festival, an annual documentary film festival that takes place each fall along the coast of Maine. The festival has been recognized as one of the top 25 festivals for documentaries in the world. You’re also the founder of Points North Forum, a conference component, which runs concurrently with the festival and includes participants from HBO, A&E, Indie Films, BBC, PBS, Sundance and the Tribeca Film Institute.
John, you are part of the Reel Project, spelled r-e-e-l, which is dedicated to connecting people and transforming lives through art, technology, information and opportunity. You’re also a photographer, a video artist, a visual artist and a teacher at Maine Media Workshops in Rockport.
The two of you told me that you grew up together in Camden, and you have been bringing the world to Camden, you have been photographing the world and bringing it back to Maine. I want you to talk about how you got inspired to do this.
Jonathan: We both grew up in the Midcoast area, and we’re both skateboarders, and actually that’s how we hung out was skateboarding and snowboarding. And I’ve continued doing that for a while. My previous live was as a professional snowboarder, and I love traveling and kind of went all over the place and did some fun things. Then burned out of snowboarding at a kind of not young age, but at 22 and decided to come back to Maine and kind of refocus life and always had a camera with me, and my passion was photography.
When Maine Media had their college program, I did their two-year college program there and then kind of catapulted myself into a career in photography, but still with that love and passion of kind of seeing the world. Instead of being someone that’s just experiencing it, it was being a part of it in a different way of capturing it and letting other people see the visions that you see out in the rest of the world. That’s my story.
Genevieve: How about you, Ben?
Ben: As John said, I grew up in Camden. We did spend a lot of time skateboarding and snowboarding. He was much better at snowboarding than I was. I kind of had dreams of becoming a professional snowboarder, but ended up playing a lot of music and going to school in Boston for film. After a lot of touring, realized that living in a van was not something I really wanted to do for the rest of my life. At the same point, I’d been going to a lot of film festivals and focusing on documentary and was trying to find a way to get into the industry without moving to LA and spend three or four or five, ten years interning and kind of starting from the ground up.
I really wanted to find a way to get back to Maine and get back to a community that I think was, you know, this was 2005, so the creative economy was just kind of being talked about, or the idea, the test of what is now I think a very successful program was just bubbling up and it seemed like a good opportunity to go back to a community that was supportive and try and put an event together, which has now become the Camden Film Festival. Just celebrated our 7th year about three weeks ago, so it’s been nice to be able to grow professionally but also have some connection to a community that I really respect.
Genevieve: Well, there’s a lot of talk about young people leaving Maine, but the two of you have just spoken about how you had this deep compulsion to come back to Maine. And not really too far after graduation. I mean …
Ben: Uh huh (affirmative). Well, I think it’s many factors that play into that. But I think for me, I have so many great connections from growing up in such a small community that I really consider people like John Laurence and our friend Jake Dowling who has a gallery in Rockland really close friends. The closest friends you have. Obviously when you’re young and trying to figure out what you want to do with your life and you need support and you need help from many different people, talented people, you obviously go to a place where you have the most support, and for me that was Camden.
If you look at our organization, for instance, you’ll see that everyone involved really I’ve known for fifteen to twenty years. It’s probably one of the most local organizations, I think, in the entire state. In that sense it’s really refreshing to see whether people live here or not, they’re still committed to the long-term vision of the Midcoast area.
Genevieve: Can you speak to what is it about our state that kind of feeds artists? Whether they end up staying, leaving, coming back … even the ones that leave tend to come back and continue to create here.
Jonathan: I think it’s a combination of a couple of different things. For one, I think a lot of people looked at Portland and the whole thing that’s going on here when you’re removed from this state and they think of the Whole Foods scene. You go to Brooklyn, and everyone’s leaving Brooklyn to have kids and open up a new restaurant in Portland. I think it’s the approach to craftsmanship, and that’s across all different art forms. For instance, my brother-in-law, my sister’s husband, is a carpenter. He would never consider himself an artist, but I mean the work that he makes is hand’s down, you don’t see that in many places. There’s a real, I think it’s the approach towards how you approach your craft, whatever it is, and the desire to really spend the time necessary to understand what you’re doing and do it at a really high level. The other concept is the lack of distractions.
Genevieve: That’s an interesting point.
Ben: I would think, you know, in cities you have everything needs to be done quickly. It’s a faster paced environment, you want to get from here to there. You don’t want to waste time by letting someone spend two weeks or two months on your kitchen or whatever. But here it’s just the concept is quality over anything else.
Johnathan: And the lack of distractions I think is a huge one, and also just in so many ways kind of the ease, not ease of life in it’s an easy living in Maine, but it just kind of, there’s nothing keeping you from if you want to just go and paint for a day or make work. It’s pretty easy just to do so. There’s no one pulling you away. You don’t have to take the train to go buy your paint supplies and take the train back, carry plywood on the subway. It’s not this whole mission. If you get inspired, you can kind of go get the materials you need quickly, and it’s just also an inspiring landscape …
Genevieve: And John, you were talking about how it was important for you to be a little rural.
Jonathan: Uh huh (affirmative).
Genevieve: So nature must play a part in that, as well.
Jonathan: It does. And I think it’s nice when you have that ability to leave the state and see other cities, other towns, other places, other countries. But then you realize that where you live is one of the most beautiful, remarkable places. I mean my father said it to me growing up when I was living out in Colorado, he came and he said “Oh, it’s really beautiful out here. You must love the mountains.” I said “I do.” He goes, “What are you going to do, because you were born on the Midcoast. You’re never going to be able to leave.” I said, “Yes, I will.” And then I found myself back there with this kind of thing where every day I’m like “He was so right. He was so right. I’m not going to be able to leave this area.”
Dr. Lisa: Don’t you hate it when your parents end up being right?
Jonathan: They’re always right. They’re always right.
Dr. Lisa: My children hate that, so …
Jonathan: They’re so right, and you’ve just got to brush it aside until you’re older and then you just tell them, “You were right.”
Speaker 1: We’ll return to our interview after acknowledging the following generous sponsor. Dr. John Herzog of Orthopedic Specialists in Falmouth, Maine. Making of Dr. John’s Brainola Cereal. Find them on the web at orthopedic specialists me dot com.
Genevieve: Ben, every year you get an abundance of submissions, and you have to pick the films you’re going to exhibit. John, every day you’re bombarded with images, and you have to pick the one that you’re going to capture and show to your audience. It’s similar and different, and I’m wondering about your process, how you both … I’m sure it’s individual.
Jonathan: I think talking about abundance, it’s really tough. I mean I probably take on average at least five photos a day with my iPhone and upload them to my blog. Sometimes I don’t feel inspired by what’s around me or maybe it’s the mood that’s the difference. But I think for me the outlet that’s helped me with kind of visually separating things is kind of the mobile upload and the blog and kind of just keeping this ongoing running thing.
Feeding the monster contents, you know, you’re always thinking visually, seeing visually, sharing, getting feedback, what people are responding to, what they’re not responding to allows you to kind of keep focused on your craft. But at the same time, not feel the need to be really technical sometimes with your big DSLR and going out there and feeling the need to be “Well, I need to make this project happen right now.” Because there’s the simple things, the everyday things that you see that you respond to, they might not be the ones that you put in the gallery. But they’re the ones that, it’s that light that’s kind of coming in …
Genevieve: Yeah, they’re like impressions.
Jonathan: Yeah, it’s that emotional response to some scene that you might look at or just something that’s kind of funny or humorous.
Genevieve: You find the jewels.
Jonathan: The world is full of, yeah. Just great little things.
Genevieve: How about you, Ben?
Ben: I think it’s funny because the way we approach it is so much different, and what I love about John and how he works is just that the amount of images that he produces and how it all, it kind of washes over you. But then every once in a while you get this one image that you just can’t get out of your head. I’ve always respected the sincerity to how he approaches it. I couldn’t do it. I mean for me, like my approach is I kind of go off the radar for like nine months (laughs) and sit in my apartment and watch three to four hundred movies a year and don’t really talk to anyone about them.
Constantly looking for 20 of them that I think will play well or will work well. For better or for worse, I’m not sure if that’s the right approach …
Genevieve: Well, I don’t think there is a right or a wrong …
Ben: Yeah, yeah, no, you know …
Genevieve: It’s just interesting to see how, because you both have to do the same thing in your careers, but just in a very different way.
Ben: Yeah, we’re both in the visual fields. I think I consider myself, the festival is many different things, but I do consider myself a programmer, and a programmer is just someone who is trying to construct a program.
Jonathan: You’re a curator.
Ben: A curator, of sorts. So the festival, for instance, it’s a combination, our program is consistent of an open call for submissions, which we get about 300 to 400 a year from all over the world. And then I travel a lot to other festivals and get to handpick certain ones that I think will do well.
Lately, when I first started the project, I always wanted to see a many films as I could with audiences, and I think that’s changing as you get a little older, you realize that there is many different ways that audiences can manipulate your connection to the work in a positive or a negative way. I think what I have here in Camden is the ability to program whatever I want, and there’s very few options like that. We’re very lucky in the sense that we don’t have the stipulations that other larger international or huge corporate-based festivals have where their programming has to be very, they have a strict kind of guidelines that they have.
This year, for instance, we screened some work that was very challenging and you had people that didn’t quite know what to make of it. There was a lot of lines blurring between what is reality, what is fiction, what is documentary, what is … I like the concept of trying to throw as much as I can at people in four days and have them kind of hopefully leave with their head spinning, having a good time, but coming back to some of the concepts that are integral to the program that I’ve put together.
Genevieve: Right, so they walk away actually talking about what’s going on. Whether they hate it or love it, they have a strong reaction.
Ben: Yeah, and the greatest compliment I can get is from someone that says, “Gee, I really didn’t like that movie, but I’m still thinking about it a year later.”
Genevieve: Right.
Ben: Or whatever it is.
Genevieve: That I think is something that artists would like with their work, as well.
Ben: Yeah.
Genevieve: John, tell me a little bit about Maine Media Workshops.
Jonathan: Maine Media Workshops is kind of a fantastic little retreat. I love watching students come in there, no matter what age they are and entering into some places definitely going to change their life in some way, shape or form. It transformed my life, and I love being a teacher there and allowing people to get that ah ha moment where all of the sudden they’re just, they click and they get something in their head that they’ve never gotten before. Just the ability to share ideas with people and allow them to just kind of break the box down that they’ve built up around themselves perhaps.
I used to teach a teaching class, so teaching teachers, and it was always really fun to teach that class. You see veteran teachers that have been teaching for years and years and years and they’ve gone through the whole black and white, dark room thing, their schools have cut that because of financial costs, they’re now on digital. They’ve never really had a background in digital. You start talking about new concepts, new ideas that you can do that teach students all these different kind of narrative threads or workflow kind of threads. You see them kind of like their eyes and their brains just start to swell and by the time Friday comes around, they’re just this hot air balloon just kind of floating. It’s a great feeling to watch people kind of have that transition. I’m sure Ben feels that when people walk away from the film festival, and they’ve had their life kind of something impacted and it’s no longer going to be the same. They’ve been hit by some kind of thought or a question.
Genevieve: So for our listeners out there, if they would like to make a submission to the Camden Film Festival or come take a workshop at Maine Media Workshops, how do they go about doing that?
Ben: Well, for the festival, it’s an open call for submissions, which it opens up this year on December 1st and will be open for submissions through about July 1st. It is a kind of a rolling fee, based on when you submit. There’s a few different deadlines. We do encourage as many Maine filmmakers, experimental filmmakers, documentary filmmakers to submit, because we do have I think all the Made in Maine showcase which is about 2 ½ days of really amazing work that we’ve seen over the past seven years really continue to develop and grow.
One of the main things about the festival is we really want to open professional opportunities and doors for the filmmakers working here regionally.
Genevieve: That’s great to know about. And John, what about Maine Media Workshops?
Jonathan: If you’re interested in taking a workshop at Maine Media, it’s mainemedia.edu, and you can either download the catalog in PDF form or browse everything online. There’s a lot of different workshops, so …
Genevieve: Great, so we encourage all of you out there to check it out.
Jonathan: Yeah, at least just browse and get inspired.
Genevieve: I think you guys have blazed a trail, and I think all of your efforts will benefit all of us right now, but also all of those upcoming visual artists and movie makers and writers and storytellers and screen writers that are growing up in our state right now. So thank you both for coming on for the Maine Magazine Minutes. It’s been such a pleasure.
Dr. Lisa: Where can we find out more about you?
Ben: Well, you can find out more about the festival and what we do at camdenfilmfest.org. That’s fest, not festival.
Jonathan: You can find me at johnathanlaurence.com.
Dr. Lisa: You can find out more about the Reel Project there, too.
Jonathan: Yeah.
Dr. Lisa: Which we didn’t really talk about, but it’s pretty fascinating.
Jonathan: Or you can find out about the Reel Project just by going to thereelproject.org. You can find out all about the Artist’s Giving Back program that we’ve been working on and kind of the continuing work in the Congo.
Dr. Lisa: And you’re both on Facebook?
Jonathan: And we’re both on Facebook.
Dr. Lisa: We will link through the Dr. Lisa website, so there should be many avenues which will get people to where you are.
Jonathan: Wonderful. Thank you.
Genevieve: To read more about Ben Fowlie, the Camden International Film Festival, Maine Media Workshops and Jonathan Laurence, please visit us online at themainemag.com. Our November/December 2011 issue features new articles on other inspiring artists and entrepreneurs living in our state. Subscribe at mainemag.com or pick up an issue at your local newsstand.