The Music Bed Communty with an excellent interview of Felt Soul's Ben Knight.
How far are you willing to go for your films? Are you willing to break the law? Get arrested? Spend 18 hours hiding from helicopters to get a single shot of a dam exploding? For Ben Knight, one of the filmmakers behind the recent (and excellent) documentary DamNation, the answer is yes.
“Pretty much everything we did in the film was illegal,” Ben told us. “Every single day we were trespassing.”
But Ben is no stranger to working around the system. After dropping out of high school during his senior year, Ben carved out a career for himself as a photojournalist before finally transitioning into documentary filmmaking. He’s living proof there is no “right way” to get into this type of work. Ben’s lack of concern for the “rules” has become an asset. The monomania that made him a bad student has turned him into a visionary filmmaker.
We recently talked with Ben about his career, his activism, and how far he was willing to go to make a film about dams.