In our recent The Camera Life Podcast episode, Justin and Greg from team Lucky Straps chatted with filmmaker and photographer Ben Lawrence.
Ben’s earliest inspirations as a visual creative began in his family home growing up. His father was a filmmaker who was also into photography, had photos displayed on the walls, and kept numerous photography books from which Ben would study and learn. Ben found that these influences would occupy his thoughts at a young age, and his desire to create his own stories and work intensified. In high school, Ben learnt the ropes with film cameras and through processing, developing, and printing his images in the school darkroom. Ben humbly admits that despite his filmmaking career, his secret, sacred love has always been photography. Ben naturally transitioned from photography to filmmaking while still telling stories with images. Furthermore, while Ben is an established filmmaker, he generates most of his work and income in advertising videography.
Ben’s journey has allowed him to explore street and photojournalistic photography to understand and document the human experience. Ben’s stills projects focus on a simple idea that often takes years to evolve and build into a complete project. Many of the images and projects concentrate on portraiture to document life and social justice issues and have gone on to be shown at solo exhibitions in Australia. Ben’s images have also hung at The National Portrait Gallery in Canberra, Australia. Furthermore, his images have been recognised at The Spider Awards for photojournalism in London, The Australian National Photographic Portrait Prize, The HeadOn Portrait Photography Festival and the International Photography Awards in New York. Ben also studied at a New York summer school to learn the craft of filmmaking. He began that journey thinking he would become a camera assistant but finished realising he wanted to be a director.
Ben provided great insight into filmmaking and how his career began in the industry, learning the craft like an apprentice learning a trade. Ben’s highly acclaimed career includes numerous local and international awards. His films have been screened at famous festivals, including Toronto, Busan, Sydney, Edinburgh, Clermont-Ferrand, Sheffield, DocNYC, Melbourne, Palm Springs, Sitges and Sao Paulo. Ben has also been nominated for or won some pretty high-profile awards. Ben is a two-time Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Award nominee and four-time Australian Writers Guild Award winner across feature film, documentary and podcast categories.
In 2018, his documentary Ghosthunter won the Sydney Film Festival Best Documentary and was nominated for the Illuminate Award at Sheffield DocFest. In 2020, he was awarded the Australian Directors Guild's highest award for his debut feature film, Hearts and Bones - which starred Hugo Weaving and premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. And in 2022, Ben was nominated for Australia’s most prestigious journalism documentary award - The Walkley Documentary Award. As a filmmaker, Ben has also directed factual TV series, including The Jury: Death on the Staircase, Stuff The British Stole and the 4 Corners series Exposed: The Case of Kelli Lane. His latest feature documentary, Ithaka, opened both the Barcelona & Berlin Human Rights Film Festivals - where it won the audience award and also screened in competitions at Sydney, DocNYC, Sheffield and DocEdge Festival - where Ben was awarded Best International Director. It’s clear to see that Ben has forged a name for himself in an otherwise competitive and crowded industry.
One of Ben's most essential elements of filmmaking is the delivery of narrative and how a visual story is told. What’s more, Ben explores ideas and pursues possible means of delivering key messages through the process. In a 2010 director’s statement about his film Ghosthunter, Ben explained:
I read an article in my local paper about a man who had seen his dead brother’s ghost. This triggered a seven-year journey into the psyche of a ghost hunter who discovers that man’s enemies are not demons, but human beings like himself. This film explores how our identities are forged from a very young age, and how our ability to forget protects us while we construct our lives. And while we survive by this ability to forget, our compulsion to remember and our desire to know the truth, creates a irreconcilable war that plays out deep within our hearts.
Ghosthunter began as a story about a man facing grief by healing the haunted lives of others. It revealed itself to be the tale of one man’s overwhelming desire to confront a past that threatened to destroy him.
Chatting with Ben on The Camera Life podcast was a fascinating insight into the world of screenwriting, direction, producing, and filmmaking. Ben opened our eyes and minds to how a passionate photographer can move into a related industry while transferring creative passion and image-making prowess. Learning so much about the Australian filmmaking industry and the struggles professionals like Ben face in developing innovative projects was also fantastic. If you’re unfamiliar with The Camera Life Podcast, be sure to take a look at our YouTube channel for the latest episodes and, of course, our back catalogue of weekly shows. Our shows are also available on popular audio podcast platforms. If you like what you see, please give us a thumbs up, Subscribe to The Camera Life, and click on the bell icon to receive notifications of upcoming shows.
