We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Ben Mathews. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Ben below.

Ben, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about the things you feel your parents did right and how those things have impacted your career and life.

Even though they balked at the idea of film school when I first proposed it, they have, over the years, come to embrace my passion full heartedly. Both my parents come from business backgrounds, so I bet the idea of their son going into a creative field, one that’s hard to study and define, was daunting. Regardless of their uncertainties, they’ve watched and supported me as I’ve grown as an artist, an entertainment professional, and a filmmaker. I am grateful for their support and I know that their encouragement has allowed me to test my limits both creatively and emotionally. This has, hopefully, allowed me to become the best artist I can be.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Ever since I was very little and my family would do BlockBuster Fridays, I have been in love with movies. In high school, when I learned that movies weren’t just works of art that appeared on screen but that teams of people, people passionate about stories, characters, and worlds, got together and made the magic happen, I decided I wanted to be a part of that journey. I started with making cringy short films with friends, and I am now working in LA as a director and producer. In 2020 I graduated film school in Paris, France. In 2022, I completed my first feature film, Grassland, as a director and producer. This year, I co-produced, co-wrote, and directed a short film which I’m very proud of, Paper Plane, which we’ll release in festivals in 2024. Needless to say, it has been a constant, crazy, and exciting journey. In addition to my creative endeavors as a filmmaker, I aim to work in producing and development, so I can help further the independent filmmaking model in the theatrical-release space. The stories I gravitate towards are interpersonal with focuses on identity and belonging. Films have always been an answer for me, and I aim to contribute positive, meaningful stories for as long as I can.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

In our IP and AI excited world, I continue to believe that human-centric, human-generated, and original-concept stories are the most meaningful, relatable, and important. There are inherent risks in supporting and creating original concept films, but their existence enhances our creativity as a community and encourages other audiences and artists to do the same. How else can we grow, learn, and share without being honest and, maybe more importantly, human? So, it is my aim to develop and produce non-IP, human-centric feature films for the big screen. I also hope to minimize budgets to make the inherent risks of non-IP stories less substantial. Ultimately, this is an industry, and I hope that I can contribute a well-rounded creative and economical point of view.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

For me, the most rewarding part of being a creative (and this might be more relevant for filmmakers) is sharing the experience with an audience. When you write, produce, and direct your own films, inevitably, it’s a very personal experience. I enjoy the part of the process where you ‘abandon’ the project to the masses, where your work becomes everyones experience. It is this part of filmmaking where the magic really does come alive. Where people find meaning and emotion and purpose in your stories. We all might have different experiences from one film, but that is exactly the point. It’s an organic, ever-changing entity. This is the part of the process that I fell in love with many years ago and it is the reason I make movies today.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.benjaminmathews.me/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/benmathews98/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjamin-mathews-0a7393141/