The 20th Camden International Film Festival in Maine – one of most highly-anticipated annual gatherings for the documentary community – has kicked off with some major news.
Elise McCave, head of film at Kickstarter, was announced Thursday night as the new executive director of the Points North Institute, the nonprofit that puts on the festival and many other artist programs. McCave’s appointment caps a search process that began after PNI executive director Ben Fowlie, who founded the Camden International Film Festival, announced his resignation in January. The institute has been run on an interim basis by Rick Rector, a PNI board member, while the institute conducted its search.
“I am here standing on the cusp of a really exciting new adventure,” McCave said as the festival officially got underway. “I’m so thrilled to join the team at Points North Institute and to lead this organization into its third decade.”
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McCave told the audience at the festival’s Journey’s End venue, “In these really critical moments in the industry and in our world at large, the Points North Institute plays a unique and essential role identifying, investing in, nurturing and then exhibiting work with a real diversity of perspectives in an environment which invites dialogue — not always easy dialogue, but dialogue. This is vital for a democracy to thrive. This public discourse [is needed], especially in this moment where discourse is more polarized, less nuanced at all levels — local, national, international.”
Also Thursday night, Sean Flynn, who co-founded the Points North Institute in 2016 with Fowlie and PNI board president Caroline von Kühn, was announced as the institute’s new creative director. He succeeds Fowlie, who also served in that capacity until early this year.
“It’s an honor and a thrill to start this new chapter for the Points North Institute and to try to steward this incredible festival,” Flynn said on stage. “I think it’s one of the best documentary film festivals in the world, hands down. And I know I’m a little biased, but I think others will back me up on that.”
Like McCave, Flynn also noted the larger cultural and political context in which the 20th CIFF is unfolding, saying, “[T]he world is on fire and on edge in so many ways, in so many places.” He acknowledged changing imperatives in the commercial side of the nonfiction film business, which are making it harder to fund and distribute documentaries on substantive topics.
“These are existential times that call for asking some existential questions. Why does cinema matter? Why support independent filmmaking? What can the stories that are shared, the community that’s built in spaces like this contribute to our culture and to our democracy?” Flynn asked. “And as I’ve thought about these questions, I keep coming back to that fundamental democratic ideal — freedom of expression. What does it mean to support artists in taking those risks, in expanding the expressive possibilities of this incredible medium? How do we create space for voices and perspectives and lived experiences that are excluded from so much of our public discourse? How do we push back on dominant narratives that reinforce social hierarchies, valuing some lives over others and create new narratives that dismantle those hierarchies, that center joy and love and human flourishing?”
He continued, “I know cinema doesn’t have all the answers to these questions, but I believe it’s the space in which we can continue to ask them and that’s why we must champion and invest in independent artists and actively engage with their work.”
Fowlie, who dreamed up the idea of launching a documentary film festival in coastal Maine back when he was a 22-year-old college student, traveled to this year’s event from London, where he is now based, serving as VP of Sales and Partnerships, Original Content, at Universal Pictures Content Group. The festival played a video tribute to him Thursday night before he took the stage to make some valedictory remarks.
“For those that don’t know, I spent the better [part] of 40 years in Camden, Maine, only to relocate to the borough of Camden in London about two years ago, but this place will always remain home,” he said. “During my 20 years building this organization from the ground up, there was never a moment where it felt like a job. To me, this has been my passion. I had a strong desire to create something in a place that I loved, that I wanted to share with people. And the opportunity to invest in and uplift artists who inspired me and to share in their commitment of helping others see images and issues from new perspectives is something that I’ll never forget.”
The 2024 Camden International Film Festival runs in person through Sunday at venues in Camden and Rockland, Maine; the festival continues online from Sept. 16-30. The event opened Thursday night with Apocalypse in the Tropics, with Oscar-nominated filmmaker Petra Costa on hand to present her documentary. Additional films in the CIFF lineup include The Last Republican, directed by Steve Pink; Soundtrack to a Coup D’Etat (dir. Johan Grimonprez), No Other Land (dirs. Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Rachel Szor); Mistress Dispeller (dir. Elizabeth Lo); Patrice: The Movie (dir. Ted Passon); Dahomey (dir. Mati Diop); Homegrown (dir. Michael Premo), and Blink, directed by Edmund Stenson and Daniel Roher.
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