Exploring the fields of history and film, Ben creates fictional worlds around him to experience a place in a different time. However, this summer he's going to examine the real world through his documentary project about people at Explo.
I am taking the Filmmaking Concentration. It’s nice being in a place where other people are just as passionate about something as you are — where you are in the company of equals. It’s nice. A few years ago, my interest in film started to grow. I started to make short movies and got invested in it. There’s always something in our life, a time when we feel like our world is too boring. The idea with film is that you can be completely transported into another time and place. A place that you couldn’t have seen because you weren’t alive, or just a completely fictional place that’s just amazing in some faraway place. You’re completely taken away from your problems and your fears, and you forget what’s on your mind.
If I could work with any director, I would work with Martin Scorsese. He just breaks all the rules and somehow he’s able to get so much out of it. I think I would like to do a drama about somebody who is different in some way. Unable to fit in. A lot of his films are about outsiders. His movies make you think. And I would like to do something low-key and thought-provoking.
I’ve done comedies, suspense horror type of films, fiction, and drama. Right now, we're going to work on a documentary which is about different things happening at Explo. The documentary I’m working on is about the multicultural aspect of Explo. I’m going to interview people maybe in my dorm, because just in my dorm alone, there are people from Saudi Arabia, China, and Russia. I think that it would be interesting to interview them and ask them questions about Explo — if being an international student is easy and enjoyable, and how different their experience might be.
Mari Armei