We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Travis Lee Ratcliff. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Travis Lee below.
Alright, Travis Lee thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.
I grew up in the suburbs of North Texas. I struggled in school at a young age. It was only when I found theater and film that I felt like I found a space where I could express myself fully. I quickly moved from acting in and directing plays to directing short films in high school and found myself pursuing a film education at the Savannah College of Art and Design.
After I graduated, I was ready to move to either New York or Los Angeles to pursue a career in film but when I stopped and looked at where the filmmakers I most admired were coming from I was surprised to see that they were actually emerging out of Texas.
At that time, there was a wave of new filmmakers like Yen Tan, Kat Candler, Augustine Frizzell, David Lowery, Toby Halbrooks, and Shane Carruth all coming out of the organic film scene that had been fostered by institutions like Richard Linklater’s Austin Film Society.
I never saw myself returning to live and work in Texas, but my time away from the state gave me a new perspective that my identity as a Texan might be a key part of the stories I want to tell. I think that sometimes we can only appreciate who we really are when we spend time away from what actually makes up a core part of ourselves.
Away from Texas, I found myself enamored with the myths, legends, and strange identity of my upbringing. It was necessary for me to spend four years away from the state to gain that perspective, but now that I was graduating from film school I had gained an appreciation for what made where I was from unique.
It was through that realization, and my admiration for the radical independence of the Texan film scene that I moved to Austin and began my career working on the film sets of some of the filmmakers I most admired.
My first feature film experience in Texas was working on the debut feature of Augustine Frizzell, which was produced by David Lowery, and soon after I found myself working for Yen Tan on one of his films.
These were the filmmakers who epitomized this radical new wave of cinema that I felt was emerging out of the state at the time.
Seeing first hand how these filmmakers were working and telling stories that felt authentically Texan but also deeply personal to their own journeys became the core of my post-film school education.
This way of working became essential to the formation of a narrative compass that would ultimately inform the stories I feel driven to make as a filmmaker.
Travis Lee, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I’m a director and editor based in Austin, Texas.
Over the last ten years I’ve been working as a commercial and documentary filmmaker.
I’ve directed commercials for brands that include Frito-Lay, Hershey’s, Shiner, and Yuengling. My documentaries have been featured in film festivals including SXSW, and Tribeca.
I began my career working on film sets around the state as well as contributing film criticism and video essays to online outlets.
My video essays were well received, receiving multiple Vimeo Staff Picks and being featured by outlets such as Criterion, Sight and Sound Magazine, No Film School, and Film School Rejects.
Saturating myself in video essays and film criticism allowed me to build a skillset that ultimately translated itself well towards my transition as a documentary film director.
I think the fusion of my experiences working inside the trenches of independent filmmaking and my late nights working on writing and editing film criticism content led to a kind of natural evolution into my current work as a documentary film director.
As a documentarian I’ve explored the working practices of artists around the world, profiling the sculptor Dony MacManus in my film ‘In the Space Between Ages,’ a shoemaker in Barcelona in my film ‘Zapateria’ and capturing the lives of a collective of coffee farmers in Nicaragua in my film ‘The Hands We Cannot See.’
My most recent film, ‘Dynasty and Destiny,’ is a portrait of Kanesha Jackson a third generation rodeo champion who is training her daughter Kortnee to follow in her and her grandmother’s footsteps. It’s a film that attempts to take the heightened cinematic documentary style we’ve developed following artists around the world into our own backyard here in Texas.
To tell this most recent story we used a combination of film formats, shooting mostly on celluloid (16mm and 35mm) allowed us to craft a visual language that showcases the way legends pass from mother to daughter within a family.
We wanted to make something that reveals the expansive and enduring quality of the traditions of the southwest and captures how many overlooked subcultures make up the diverse tapestry of experiences within the story of Texas.
As a commercial director I’m often taking my expertise at crafting emotionally driven profile films and deploying them in the service of telling brand stories inside of companies. It’s a pleasure to work inside the challenging framework of a commercial setting where the restrictions often lead to creative solutions and exciting discoveries utilizing our craft to solve for the task at hand.
In 2019 I founded the Austin based production company, Movement House, with my producing partner Brody Carmichael.
The two of us, along with our creative partner Emily Basma, have been working to tell commercial and personal stories together under this label ever since.
Our goals are always evolving, but at its core is a desire to build community with our fellow Texan filmmakers, tell personal stories that re-examine this place that we are all from, and find commercial avenues that can help us all expand our working lives as filmmakers.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
Much of my original work with my production company, Movement House, was travel based documentaries prior to the pandemic.
We were working with brands who would commission us to tell five to ten minute stories around the world.
When the pandemic hit, that work had to radically change.
We grounded ourselves in Austin and moved into more commercially focused projects based here at home in the state.
What began as a crisis and challenge opened up a whole new way of working and encouraged us to start thinking about telling the kinds of stories I always wanted to tell: stories that showcased clash between the mythic idea of Texas and the contemporary realities of the southwest.
As we adapted to remaining more based here at home over these last few years it has allowed us to build more of a solid community within the Austin film scene, which is something I’m incredibly appreciative of as I observe a whole new wave of filmmakers coming up around us.
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
As I look forward to the future I see a mission developing around two central points of focus: to tell my own stories and to help empower the people around me to tell their stories.
For myself, this looks like crafting narrative and documentary stories that explore the intersection between the myth of Texas and the contemporary realities of the state today. I’m interested in both the aspirational qualities of Texan identity and the flaws that have caused errors or blindspots in our character.
When I can find a documentary or narrative story that highlights these aspects of our unique regional identity, I feel as if I’m making a contribution towards the ever continuing process of this unique place examining itself.
As a producer, editor, and collaborator: my goal is to help my fellow Texan filmmakers find ways to develop their own work. I moved to this state because I saw a unique wave of new filmmakers emerging and my dream is to see that continue. In recent years, that has begun to occur again as a completely new generation has started to emerge with even more radical and exciting visions for how the cinema of Texas can transform and capture the unique character of this time and place.
There are so many unbelievable new voices here from a whole range of perspectives that have the potential to lead the state in re-thinking its modern identity and plotting wholly new horizons of imaginary possibility for what it means to be Texan in the future.
Finding ways to encourage, collaborate, and build co-operative modes of support for these emerging filmmakers is becoming an increasingly important part of my vision for the work that I want to carry out in the future.
Story should never exist in a vacuum.
The work we do in cinema is a contribution to an ever growing tapestry.
If we can help those around us tell their own stories we are not only making our own contribution to the tapestry of cinema but we are helping the whole of the fabric grow and change.
This, I think, is what it means to be a part of a new wave; a moment in time where many storytelling voices find themselves working suddenly in parallel together, amplifying each other as a result.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.travisleeratcliff.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/travisleeratcliff
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/travratc
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@travisleeratcliff
- Other: Production company: www.movementhouse.tv
Image Credits
1. Travis Lee Ratcliff and Brody Carmichael filming Kanesha Jackson and Kortnee Solomon for their 2024 film ‘Dynasty and Destiny’ Photo by Peyton Frank
2. Travis Lee Ratcliff at the Hill Country Film Festival
3. Travis Lee Ratcliff, Emily Basma, and Brody Carmichael on the set of ‘In Search of Lost Continents.’ Photo by Peyton Frank
4. Travis Lee Ratcliff, Emily Basma, and Brody Carmichael on the set of ‘In Search of Lost Continents.’ Photo by Peyton Frank
5. A still from Movement House’s forthcoming film ‘Dynasty and Destiny’
6. A still from Movement House’s forthcoming film ‘Dynasty and Destiny’
7. A still from Movement House’s forthcoming film ‘Dynasty and Destiny’