Ben Barton – Film Festival

Ben Barton has been writing poetry and making films since the age of seven. Throughout school, he didn’t know which route his career would take.  After doing a degree in English and Filmmaking, he still hadn’t committed, and to this day is trying to work out whether he needs to, why not do both? Co-founder of the Folkestone Film Festival, Folkelife met up with Ben to talk about his work.

“I grew up on the Romney Marsh, went to Uni in Canterbury and have worked at Saga, so I qualify as a local.  When you leave University you need to get a job, and I found one as a writer.  For five years or so, that was my main focus.  However, I’d been making films from an early age, and my Dad had always made films on a Super Eight.  I love that quality that you get with analogue.”

making films

“I’d made many horror films and music videos this way.  You can’t see what you’re shooting, there’s no instant playback, so it teaches you patience.  Once you’ve filmed, you send it off to a lab and wait for it to be sent back to you where you then project it onto a wall to see the results.  It’s an artistic, tactile process, where film becomes a real object again. 

“As the years went by, I built a collection of these films into Camera Obscura.  This is an hour long film show and premiered at the second Creative Folkestone Triennial in 2011 as part of Folkestone Fringe. At one point, I projected them onto a wall in Athens, Greece, and the film got accepted by around 50 film festivals.”

olympic legacy

“I don’t know if you remember the Olympics in 2012, but there were big screens put up all around the country, and the BBC was looking for content to show on them.  My films got chosen and were shown all around the country!  They were silent films, one retelling Little Red Riding Hood in Folkestone, and so on.  These art pieces were shown around the UK. 

“My husband and I adopted a son in 2011, one of the first gay couples in Kent to do so.  And so around that time I took about five years off creative work. It’s exhausting being a parent, and I just didn’t have the energy to create new content.  Then I had a crazy idea to make a sci-fi film in Folkestone with CGI everywhere!  This was the film that David Bowie ended up funding due to a mix up with the hire of a costume!”

david bowie and Stella Erratica

“I had booked to use a space suit for my film.  It was a replica, but a really good one, and it cost about £2000 to hire.  And the Monday before I was due to film with it, I got a phone call asking if I could possibly move my filming as someone else needed the suit. I was self-funding this project and I really didn’t want to lose the money. But, this person, and I didn’t know who it was, was offering to fund the rest of my film for the inconvenience.  So, of course, I said yes!  

“I then found out later that it was David Bowie, filming the video for Blackstar, his last album before he died. So all the props that were in Blackstar, are in my little video which we shot on the Harbour Arm!  It was a crazy time, and reignited my film-making.”

touring the world

“I spent a year touring the world with Stella Erratica; it got shown in America, and nominated for an award in Germany!  I was living the life of an independent film-maker, and then Covid struck. We went back online, and that’s when we started up the Folkestone Film Festival. There’s a huge film-making community here in Folkestone and we started small with some screenings and so on.  In the last couple of years it’s grown and grown.  We do two editions a year, and people fly in from New Zealand, Ireland, Scotland, Cornwall, all to show their work.”

folkestone film festival

“Lots of people are coming to Folkestone for the Film Festival.  I’m not saying we’re putting Folkestone on the map, but we’re certainly sticking a pin there for people to see us and experience what we have here.  We love it, and encourage people to stay the night, that way you can get to see more of the town. 

“As part of our screenings we like to use unexpected places.  If we can bring an audience to a place they might not have discovered yet, then that’s a good thing.  So we’ve projected films onto walls in F51 with an audience who might never have entered a skate park before.  Quarterhouse and the Silver Screen are regular places we use, and those make sense for us.  But, we do have pop-up viewings and workshops in other places around town that help people explore.”

Festival in November

“We run the festivals in November and March/April time, just before Easter.  It works for the town as those periods are usually quieter, and so there’s something going on.  And, in the height of summer you don’t really want to be sitting in a dark room watching a film, you want to be outside!

“Our panel of ten judges are all volunteers.  Colin O’Reilly and I are the directors, and run the festival as a not-for-profit venture. We also get to make the final decisions too.  But our team of judges watch everything that comes in, and we then have a good discussion as to what should be in the top ten.”

diversity in film-making

“It’s also refreshing to see that we have such a diversity in the films we see, and in who is making them.  Last year there was a 50/50 split in terms of female to male directors.  It wasn’t engineered, that’s how it happened, which is how it should be.  There are so many directors from different backgrounds too.  We’ve shown Palestinian and Israeli films at the same festival, which might have been seen as controversial, but it wasn’t.  We’re open, and balanced, and if we think the film is great, then it should be seen by as many people as possible.”

Film Freeway

“We use a platform called Film Freeway which is where people upload their films for us to consider. It’s the world’s biggest film festival platform, and we’re in the top ten of the best reviewed UK film festivals. Our reviews say we’re friendly and welcoming, and we don’t categorise people. 

“We want to show films from all different areas of life, and if you’re a student, or just starting out, we want to see what you’re creating too.  The film industry is a community, and if we can build something that says that Folkestone Film Festival is a community that you can be a part of, then that’s important to us.”

is folkestone the birthplace of television?

“It’s also important for me, and Colin, to be making our own films too. You can put so much into the festival, but at the same time, we are film-makers ourselves and we should still spend time doing what we love.  

“I am currently touring a film I made which came from an article I wrote for the Folkestone Foghorn a while back.  There was apparently a mysterious plaque somewhere in Folkestone that said that John Logie Baird invented television here, rather than in Hastings, as the history books say.  This started as an article, and then the Folkestone Documentary Festival were looking for people to make documentaries, and so I made this film, and now I’m taking around the South East showing it in various places.  I am taking it to the Hastings Film Festival and might well get lynched, so let’s hope not eh?

“The film is about six minutes long, and I was able to find the plaque, as well as some archive footage which was about 60 years old.  I digitised it, and that’s part of the documentary. John Logie Baird was a secretive man.  He got pipped to the post with many of the inventions he was working on, so began to be very cagey about what he was doing.  He had been working in Folkestone and Hastings, and when he finally announced his invention of the Television, he told the Hastings side of the story.  Those in Folkestone who knew what he was doing were quite confused.  I’ve managed to get some of those accounts for the documentary.”

collaborations in folkestone

“What is wonderful is the community we have here in Folkestone supports creatives in a wide cross-over of disciplines and festivals.  I share an office with the wonderful Peter Blach, who is connected to the Folkestone Documentary Festival.  We’re all film-makers, and we encourage each other to reach out of our comfort zone, and also embrace our craft.  

“Film-making does teach you patience though.  It can take up to a year to shoot and edit the film.  Then, if you choose to take it on the festival circuit then there are deadlines which take you into the next year, and then the actual festival might not be for another year or so.  You are constantly chasing your tail, showing films at festivals you made at least a year before.  But next, after this, I’m going back to my Super Eight roots.  I’m making a horror film, set all around Folkestone, with creepy masked characters.  I can’t wait!”