Latest / The MOOD Podcast / The Art of Filmmaking: 'Torn' and the Therapeutic Power of Storytelling, E037

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The Art of Filmmaking: 'Torn' and the Therapeutic Power of Storytelling, E037 · The MOOD Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: How did it all start?
• 0:02
  Speaker 2: It definitely started with, just like that selfish desire to see the world through different eyes.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: How do you decide on those kind of topics and those stories to explore and kind of?
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: What criteria do you use to determine their significance?
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: I don't think you can start necessarily with an issue.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: I think you have to start with a character.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Do you think traditional journalism anyway is dying a death?
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: How is that relationship with the media?
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: How do you walk that fine line of putting your stuff out there as objective and true storytelling way that you want to?
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: You can't be hindered by what people think.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: What was that reception for this film torn back in 2010?
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: That project was about my own life, about processing my own trauma and grief around the loss of a parent when I was a kid, when my father was killed, it became this thing that didn't really feel like it belonged to me anymore.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: It was tough.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: Is there a specific way that you deal with that?
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: I thought that going through this process would be possible in the sense that we would all get to shed light on some of these things that we had kept in the dark for a long time.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: And was it?
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of the Mood Podcast, and on this one I jumped online to have a chat with photographer, filmmaker and journalist Max Lowe.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Max has done many things in the visual arts arena, so it was hard to know truly where to begin.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: I was interested mostly in his documentary filmmaking, so we took a deeper exploration into his storytelling expertise and the processes and philosophies behind it.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: Max is known for his ability to capture deep human stories on some of the most exposed edges of the world and has witnessed a wide range of human experiences, from mountains of Montana to countries and landscapes around the world, having worked with many of the biggest global brands our industry has to offer.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: Throughout his career he has told stories of his own and the people he met along the way.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: Many of his documentary films have won numerous awards and have been screened at prestigious festivals such as Cannes and Tribeca.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: His most recent work, with films such as Tawn and Camp Courage, show a level of emotion and empathy that justifies many of his accolades.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: So now I bring you Max Lowe.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: Max Lowe, welcome to the Mood Podcast.
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks so much for having me, Matt.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a pleasure and I know we've been going back and forth for a while, so thanks so much for joining me.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: It means a lot.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: Can we start just by giving a little bit of an introduction about yourself, but mainly exactly what you do, without kind of trying to pigeonhole you too much, and why you do it.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the what I do question.
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: I think that's a pretty broad answer for me and nowadays I would say that majority of my time in focus is film director.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: But that title is just the peak of a very large umbrella.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: I am a producer, I film a lot of my own work, I still do a lot of photography work as parts of the projects that I'm working on, these larger film projects and outside of that, do speaking work.
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: I mean, I would say that I'm more of a general storyteller than anything else, because that's really the term that's really defined my career over the years, kind of doing a little bit of everything from writing, photography, filmmaking, all the lot.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: How did it all start?
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: I know National Geographic played a large role in that.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: Can you give us a kind of elaboration as to how your journey in this space started?
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I grew up traveling a lot with my family.
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: My parents kind of prioritized the experience of travel and getting out into the world and adventure.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: From a young age we were out camping with our family, get carried out into the wilds, montana and beyond our parents' backs.
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: They both took something that they were passionate about and turned it into a career for themselves.
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: When mom was an artist, my father was a mountaineer, a professional mountaineer.
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: I think.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: When it came time for me to kind of look for something that I wanted to do with my life, it wasn't really a question whether or not I wanted to find something that wasn't just a job to take out most of my time.
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: Photography was something I found in high school and started doing In journalism.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: I was in the high school newspaper and I just became enamored with the idea of stepping out of your own shoes and into the shoes of other people through the veil of storytelling.
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: With a camera in hand, you suddenly had access to these experiences and perspectives that you never would have had otherwise.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: That really has been the defining inspiration for me as I continued on to become a journalist and filmmaker director all the lot, I would say.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: What is it specifically about that, the Nama that you talk about with stepping into other people's shoes?
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: Why do you think there is that kind of visceral interest and curiosity that you have if you can kind of put a finger on it?
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: Why do you think that comes from?
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: I think at first it was just kind of the selfish act that probably a lot of people have of wanting to experience more in life.
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: We all spend most of our days in our own heads and to break up the dull drums of that kind of daily plotting journey that we're all taking through life, having new experiences is a way to break up the monotony of day-to-day life.
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: I found that executing that search for new experiences by telling stories was a way for me to not only do things that I might have been capable of doing.
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: I grew up here in Montana skiing and doing these outdoor adventure pursuits, but I went to college and continued to pursue photography and started working for some small publications and started shooting a little bit of video that allowed me to step into concerts.
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: I was going to shoot these concerts and spending time with musicians and learning about this amazing world of people who were really good at this thing that I had no idea about.
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: I learned about this whole new sphere of things and went and got to sit on the edge of the pipe at the X Games as a filmer.
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: I just gave you access to these worlds that you would have had to level up a ton to be able to access as someone participating in them, other than a filmmaker or a photographer or a storyteller.
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: It's a gift.
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: I'll be the first to admit that it's selfish.
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: It's the most beautiful thing to be able to see the world through other people's eyes and through experiences beyond your own.
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: It has become something that, for me, is now much more about sharing that perspective with other people, opening up these siloed stories that might otherwise be hard to interpret for a broader audience through the perspective of someone, through their human story, through their journey that might be understated and understandable by anyone.
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: That has become an entirely different level of appreciation for storytelling for me that I definitely started with just that selfish desire to see the world through different eyes.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: It sounds like a quest to become a better human.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: Almost I'd say that may be a byproduct.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: I share that perspective with you for sure.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: It almost falls under the veil of educating yourself on other forms of life and having the artistic skill and the gift you put it to be part of that and to be able to document it is extremely powerful.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking more to your recent work now, because I've seen a lot of your work.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: I can't say I've seen all of it.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: I don't have access to Disney Plus.
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: I really wanted to see Tawn, which I didn't know about until I started looking into you, which, if you're comfortable with, we'll touch upon later, because it seems to be a very powerful and moving film.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: How do you go about documentary style filmmaking, such as that film and your latest one, which is fantastic, by the way?
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: These documentaries they often, generally speaking, they aim to shed light on important social issues or an important issue that you want to expose or to tell their story of.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: How do you decide on those topics and those stories to explore and what criteria do you use to determine their significance?
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: I guess I mean sorry about that.
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: Okay, I don't think you can start necessarily with an issue.
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: I think you have to start with a character, because telling a human story is how you're gonna be able to let people in and see something like climate change or the healthcare system or the complexity of being an adventure athlete.
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: You're not gonna be able to just talk about that thing and allow people to understand it in a human sense without the right character that's gonna let you into their personal journey through that thing that they are entrenched in.
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: And that is really at the root of how I look for stories these days.
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: I think you shape your path through the world by the things that you think are important.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: I care about the environment.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: I care about the social currency of my home here in Montana.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: I care about the ecology and wild places around me.
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: I care about how we as a society think about trauma and process trauma.
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: There's these broader issues that garner my attention and within those kind of realms I am looking for stories.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: I'm looking for people to tell those stories with.
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: But when it comes down to it, you have to have the right partners in your subjects and the characters you choose to weave into your stories, that are willing to let you into that perspective that they'll be sharing with your audience.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think most people I speak to who are storytellers much like yourself, they say the same thing.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: The first thing they want to find is the character, the central part of that story, because without that it's difficult to connect to the audience.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: Right, it's difficult for an individual because we were watching this as individuals to connect with that topic unless it's human to human almost.
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: I found that really powerful in Camp Courage.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: Can you tell us a little bit more about that film?
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: And I was curious as to how, where those characters came from, where you found them.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: Did you go out and it was out of big production kind of goals to go out and find the individuals who can tell that story or was it just by happenstance that you came across them?
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: No, it was definitely most of my chance, I would say, like most documentary subjects in my experience.
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: I had come out of kind of the release of Torn, out of my first feature documentary film, and that project was about my own life, about processing my own trauma and grief around the loss of a parent when I was a kid.
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: And I got an email from this organization that had just been founded by a group of US expats who had been living in Ukraine and their Ukrainian co-collaborators as a way to get back to some of these families that were struggling after the invasion of Ukraine, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and they wanted me to come and share my story with these families as part of this week long summer camp that they were gonna put on.
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: That would not only be an Austria kind of a central place for all these families to come together and spend some time outside, just having kind of a normal summer week together, hiking and climbing and swimming in lakes and doing the sorts of stuff you do at summer camp, but also they wanted to help them talk about this trauma.
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: They had all experienced this war, that they had all experienced collectively and just the trauma of living as refugees, forced from their homes and they kind of broke it down to me what they wanted to do with the camp and what they were hoping people would experience there, and I saw pretty immediately the potential for this to be a really powerful experience for some of these families attending, creating families and through the organization of the camp, I was able to meet Olca and Milana they were one of the families that was attending and set up a meeting with them to see if they would be willing to share their story and participate in this project.
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: I talked to them about their experience.
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: They had lost Milana's mother in 2015, back when she was about five or six, and there had been this kind of like media frenzy around her death, because at that point there weren't that many civilian deaths around the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: The media had kind of taken the story and run with it and turned it into propaganda and it had been this pretty negative experience for them, which now I directly related to, because when my father was killed, that was kind of a similar thing.
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: It became this thing that didn't really feel like it belonged to me anymore.
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: It wasn't my story anymore, it wasn't the story of my dad, it was the story about this man who, you know, all these other people were rendering their own ideas and thoughts on, and when I was thinking about what camp courage might become.
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: Camp courage might become, you know, it was really rooted in my own personal experience about having lost a parent and walked the roads processing my own trauma and thinking about how, you know, telling your story and making a film out of your life can be a difficult but also a positive experience, and how I would hopefully help them walk that same path that I had.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: And how have they received it since?
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: I mean certainly a positive, very moving, certainly a tear in my eye.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: You know, just because of the greater significance of you know the microcosm that you're showing that story through right, you as a viewer, you understand the politics, the geopolitics, the trauma for a nation as well as individuals within that nation.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: And to tell that story of one family.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: You know, it's you kind of piece all those things together.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: How did the, how did they receive it?
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure they were left.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: You know, I guess I guess with some form of therapy.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: You know, how do you get them to open up, how do you kind of feel that they experienced that process of being part of a film?
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: Well, we had a very small crew.
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: It was myself, my field producer and ADE, who was also my translator, and then my DP who was shooting, helping me do sound as well.
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: So it was just the three of us and we stepped into their lives in Bratislava, where they're still living as refugees, and pretty immediately just kind of started spending every day with them and established a decorum of trust between all of us and this understanding that we were just gonna be there with them through this experience.
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: You know, this wasn't us looking in on their lives, it was us being there with them as they stepped out of their own comfort zone and into this experience of going to this camp with all these other families and talking about these difficult things and, you know, doing these physical things that were new to them and scary, certainly to them in some ways.
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: And you know that's really when you can find the vulnerability and beauty in people's experience to really tell an intimate story of, like a human arc, a human journey is when you're able to, like, gain that ultimate trust between you and the people you're telling stories with.
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: And you know, as you see in the film, it was a hard week for Milana in some ways, but for her as well as Olga, you know, they both shifted their perspective on what they were capable of and started thinking about their relationship to one another in a different way and gained this perspective of these other families that were walking a similar path, and I think that's what we're gonna do and I think you know they both came out of that experience very appreciative.
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: But the most beautiful part for me of the whole thing was when we were able to share the film with them for the first time, which was actually this last summer.
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: I was able to go back to the camp with my fiance and volunteer for the week with a whole new group of families all who had lost a parent during the war at one point or another and screen the film for the first time with Olga and Milana and allow them to share their story with all these families and be the ones who are standing up and showing them courage to do so, so that others might follow their lead.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: Huge amount of courage.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: So for those that haven't seen it, first of all I encourage Haley to go and see it.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: It's on Netflix.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: Just a bit of story context Milana is a child who, like said, lost her parent and lost part of her leg.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: So she has these physical fears and well-perceived inabilities, I guess, which came through in the film, which she kind of got over in the end.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: But the relationship with her grandmother, who's now basically her parent, was absolutely fascinating.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: On one side you must identify with Milana a little bit, having almost similar traumas at similar ages.
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: But the trust from Milana for you to be able to get so up close and personal, because she seemed to still, at that age, just finding it all so difficult.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: She seemed to just kind of not really know how to overcome the relationship with her grandmother, how to kind of see that and how to love almost and without her replacing her mom.
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: But also on the physical side of it, and then now, in front of other children, her age and with cameras on there, I found it absolutely fascinating that her connection with you was clear, right, the trust that she had for you and with you to be able to have that camera pretty much in her face all the time was amazing and that's why, in my opinion, it's quite so exposing and so moving.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: How you know, I talk about this certainly in photography I know nothing about filmmaking, but the concept is similar and certainly with portrait photography, where, in order to get that end product that I was just describing, get that real kind of deep and meaningful and visceral story, you have to have that trust.
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: You can't just go in and just start putting a camera right.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: Talk to us a little bit about that kind of pre-production process.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: How long do you spend with them and how much of an intention is there behind just getting to know them in order that there is that real and truthful level of trust?
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: I mean I think that for me, that is an important component of any relationship that I am establishing.
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: To tell a story whether it's something like Camp Courage, where it's this very sensitive, difficult subject matter You're going to have to really be in the journey with the people that you're walking that path with, because it's going to be really hard for them.
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: I have always been one in thinking that if you're going to go and tell someone's story, you owe it to them to make sure that they feel fulfilled by that experience.
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: I think that you should walk away from those experiences with a long-lasting friendship with those people, because it should be a positive experience for the subjects.
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: Whether you're making a film or photography, I think that there's a beauty in sharing stories with the world.
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: Nowadays, when storytelling has become a hyper-economic driver in our society, there's a lot of gray area in that space.
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: I think that there's a lot of people who just want to find stories that are compelling for the sake of selling those stories.
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: That's certainly something you have to think about, because to get an audience, you have to make something that's compelling enough to sell to someone who's going to be able to get it out in the world, because that's certainly not my forte of expertise.
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: It's just part of the whole equation but I think that, like in the case of Camp Courage, this was first and foremost for me something that I felt very personally drawn to.
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: It was something that I felt in my heart.
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: Going into this project would be a positive experience for Milana and Olga if we did it the right way and were patient and humble and listened before anything else.
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: That's how I approach pretty much all my work.
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: To be honest, I just got off a call with the fifth generation rancher that I'm going to be working on a commercial project with here next week near my home in Montana.
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: I'm going to go and listen to his story.
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: We're going to make some social media assets for the Montana Beef Council, but his story is what's going to make that content that we end up creating, compelling and establishing a decorum of trust and an understanding in him that I'm there to respect him first and foremost and respect his story and the story of his family and the story of what they're trying to purvey in the world.
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: I think that that really guides all my work, no matter the story or the subject matter.
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: Hi everyone.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: Before I let you continue with the podcast, just indulge me for a few minutes.
• 28:03
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• 28:06
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• 28:15
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• 28:18
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• 28:25
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• 28:32
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• 28:37
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• 30:12
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• 30:25
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• 30:28
  Speaker 1: So thanks so much for listening and I'll let you get back to the podcast now.
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting this paradox of telling story.
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: In order to tell a good story, you have to be a good listener.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: So there's this real underlying virtue of listening to someone's story in order to really connect, empathize and then worry in a good way.
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: Right, I feel like I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm.
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: Tawn was maybe one of those films that was a bit of both.
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: It felt like it was as much your story as the story of your family, who feature, obviously, and the passing of your father.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: How did you reconcile that?
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: Because, although I haven't watched it, I've read about it, I've seen the trailer and I can kind of see the really powerful aspects of that story.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: Tell us a little bit more about Tawn, the successes of it, obviously, but more about the production side of it.
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: It must have been extremely difficult for you but was there also a kind of therapeutic aspect to kind of putting that story together, maybe finding out information you didn't know, having those conversations with some conversations with family members that maybe you hadn't had before?
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: Was there a part of that that you look back on now, a few years later, and think this was the net positive for not only me but for my family and for, I guess, my skill set and the portfolio side of the business side of filmmaking.
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it was certainly a therapeutic journey for me.
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: That was kind of the very first impetus for my starting to think about the project as a whole.
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: It was going to be a way for me to explore this event that shaped my life in a remarkably large way that I had never really explored before.
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: That's what storytelling is.
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: It's a way to explore experiences that we have had in life or that we're going to have in life.
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: Rendering something in front of a lens is a way to go deeper into how we experience the world around us.
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: I'm telling this story of my family and my father, who passed away when I was just a young kid, and this immense trauma that we all shared a part in but all had our unique experiences with.
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: I knew it was going to be really difficult for myself as well as my family.
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: It was a path that I wanted to walk and I asked them to walk with me.
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: They agreed to do it not because they wanted to, I don't think, but because I asked them and they loved me and they saw that it was something that I needed to do for myself.
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: I went into it with that selfish impetus of feeling like this was going to be a way that I could understand this whole thing in a sense that I wouldn't have otherwise.
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: I also thought that it would hopefully be a positive experience for my family as well.
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: There was a lot of things surrounding Alex's death and our family that we had just never discussed before, because it was difficult stuff to just sit down on a random Tuesday afternoon and discuss with the people you love and hold closest, because those are the people that make up your foundation in the world.
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: We go out and we put ourselves out into the world and your family are the ones that, if you have a good relationship with them and whether that's your biological family or your chosen family, the people you hold closest are the people that you come back to when you're hurt and when you need to feel secure in the world.
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: To compromise that foundation is a difficult choice to make.
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: Oftentimes.
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: That's where things that are at the root of major traits within each of us or ways that we interact with the world around us.
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: That's where those things are rooted is in our relationship with the people that are closest with us, those relationships that we refuse to explore.
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: I thought that going through this process would be positive in the sense that we would all get shed light on some of these things that we had kept in the dark for a long time.
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: And was it?
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so.
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: I think each of my family members would probably have different answers.
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: I can't speak for them, to be honest, but for me it definitely was a positive experience.
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: I got to sit down and get a picture of my mom and my stepdad, conrad that, if I have sat down, sat them down for a three hour, four hour interview you just don't have an opportunity to bend someone's patience to your will in that way otherwise Fascinating, and it's really to my brothers, my best friends.
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: We all have a different perspective on our relationship to Alex, our father, because we all got to be with him for a different amount of time.
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: I was with him up until I was 10 years old, so I got to know him fairly well, but my youngest brother, isaac, was two when he was killed, so he doesn't have any memories.
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: All of him Exploring how each of us has held that relationship to this man who defined all of our lives, because he was larger than life and remained, even in death, a major part of our lives.
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: That was eye-opening as well.
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was tough because I was a subject, right there alongside my family, exposing myself as much as I was them, because that was the only fair and equitable way to do it.
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: If I was going to ask them to step up, I had to as well, but it was also the one who was driving this whole thing and asking everyone to step into the spotlight.
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you had to be part of the whole thing in every little way.
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: Can you tell us a little bit more about?
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: Obviously?
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: We're going to encourage people to go and watch it and I'm going to definitely go and watch it myself once I get access to Disney Plus or Hulu.
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: Or Hulu yeah they're kind of the same company.
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, kind of the same thing these days, I think.
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: Can you tell us a little bit more about you touched upon and you described it, as you know, as an event, right, the event obviously of your father's passing?
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: He was a mountaineer.
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: Can you tell us a little bit more about him, but also about the events surrounding his death and kind of necessarily what happened and dig too deep into the details, but just kind of give us an overview of how you know the premise of the film essentially and how that kind of transpired?
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so Alex was at the apex of his career in the late 90s.
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: My father, alex, claimed by many to be one of the best high altitude alpine mountaineer of this generation and had kind of been on a roll in the years leading up to the fall of 1999, doing all these major expeditions and things that had never been done before with remarkable teams of some of the best adventurers and explorers of our time.
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: And in the fall of 1999, they set out to go and climb and ski.
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: It's like the fifth or seventh highest mountain in the world Shishapengba.
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: It's in the Tibetan Himalaya.
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: And part of his expedition was my now stepdad, conrad Anker, who was his then best friend and climbing partner.
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: And on that expedition they were in an avalanche, conrad and Alex and another one of their teammates, david, and Alex and David were killed and Conrad survived and Conrad would eventually come back to the US and then back into our lives and step in where Alex had left in death and I think through probably largely guilt around the fact that Alex wouldn't be there to raise me and my brothers and be there for my mom.
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: He stepped in, became close with my mom through this shared trauma of losing someone so close to them and eventually married my mom and adopted me and my brothers, and that was the story we lived in for most of my life, up until 2016, when Alex's remains were discovered, melted out of the glacier he was buried in in Tibet, and our whole family made the trip back to Tibet and the same trip Alex and Conrad had made 17 years prior to recover his remains and put him dressed.
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: Wow, wow, interesting, and you know I'm sorry if you had lost, but I, you know I'm also absolutely curious, now even more, to watch this film.
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: How was this film received?
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: You know, I've seen the feedback, which I perceive is generally very, very positive.
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: And how is that relationship with the media in terms of you know, how do you walk that fine line of putting your stuff out there, but in a you know, as objective and true storytelling way that you want to, and then receiving whatever comes from it, right?
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: Is that something you always think about or care about?
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: And, specifically, how did you know what was that reception for this film torn back in 2021?
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's not really something that I think about before the fact of the matter, to be honest, and I don't think that you should really.
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: As you're creating something, I don't think you should think about what other people are going to think about it.
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: You know you should follow your gut and you know.
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: You know what is going to be a potent beat within the story and, as you're shaping something, you should just exist within that thing and stay as close to it as you possibly can.
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean more and more and more, and once it's out there, how you know, to really care about it.
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, as a creative person, like definitely I feel rejection, I feel bad reviews.
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: You know, when someone says that something that I've done isn't good or in some capacity, you know you definitely take that on the nose to a certain extent, but it's just kind of part of the deal.
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: And you have to keep reminding yourself that.
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: You know that's just a heart.
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: You create it, you put it out in the world and then it suddenly becomes not only just yours anymore.
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: It becomes something that's owned by everyone who participates in it, whatever capacity that it is.
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: And you know you can't be hindered by what people think or what awards you might get or not get, what reviews you might get or not get.
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: I got to chat a little bit back and forth with Werner Herzog, who saw Torren when it came out and reached out to me when he saw the film and how we did an awards campaign and were going for the Academy Award and didn't end up getting shortlisted.
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: But he said something that has really stuck with me.
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: He's like one of the most prolific documentary filmmakers in the history of documentary filmmaking.
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: He's never been nominated for an Academy Award.
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: He's made like 80 documentaries in his life and he reminded me that you know it's not what it's about.
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: It's about, a your experience as the creative and B it's about the people that you touch by the things that you create and share with the world.
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: So it's hard to always have that when you send something out for judgment, but it's always something that I try to come back around to.
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that and I talk about that a lot as well with students and just other budding photographers or artists.
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: If you don't enjoy the process and you know we're going to kind of morph now into social media, but this kind of encapsulates the issue with social media If you don't truly enjoy the process and I'm talking about process is what you explained the making of it, the producing of it and the connection you have with the people that you're doing it with or doing it for If you don't truly believe in that and enjoy it and are passionate about it, then, first of all, there's no point doing it, but B, all you're going to be doing is living.
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: You're probably, then not going to create anything that's of quality and or of meaning and, lastly, all you're going to do is be disappointed, because everything in life, but especially, like you said, with art, 100% of the people out there are not going to like it.
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: I rephrase that Not 100% of people are going to like it.
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: It's just impossible.
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: You could have 1% that don't like it or 99% that don't like it.
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: Either way there are going to be people that don't like it.
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: So as soon as you can reconcile that in your own mind and accept it and just focus on the process right, because that's what you enjoy doing, then the rest will take care of itself.
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: And always think you can really tell those projects that the artist is so passionate about, because it just comes through always in the final outcome.
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: You can see it through everything that it exudes.
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: And so then, really, if you just focus everything on the process and doing the thing that you love to do, then the rest will take care of itself.
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: But I'm more interested in like your relationship with media generally, because you know, we live in a age and now I'm thinking more specifically something like camp courage where there is this umbrella of a topical, you know, hugely divisive depending on what country you come from, what background, what culture, what political side.
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: It's a topic that is, you know, it's war essentially, that Ukraine, russia and everyone is starting to get dragged into.
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: These things are obviously get warped and get adjusted and for clickbait, for, you know, capturing the population in different ways, and I know that's not really to do with what you do, but it must affect.
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: You know, if you put something out there, you must get some feedback or the media will take it and run with it and spin their narrative on it.
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: How is how you know, how do you kind of deal with that?
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: I mean, you've got a lot of experience so I'm sure you kind of it's a little bit easier for you and to not care essentially or process it in your own way.
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: But certainly for people who are just starting out or putting things out there, and certainly on a documentary side of things, where it's easy for the media to just go.
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: well, you know this is not true, or you know they'll question facts of it, or they'll question the objective of the director, the writer, the producer.
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: How do you deal with that?
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: You know, it's such a maze of shit, to put it bluntly, Like I mean do you?
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: Is there a specific way that you deal with that?
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: Do you you know, and if so, can you share it with us?
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think that when it comes down to it, and you're faced with people who think your work is shit or think that, you know, like you were mentioning Camp Courage, there was a lot of people who, you know, thought that this wasn't a grandizing like pro-American propaganda piece about the war, you know, taking advantage of these poor people who had experienced this trauma and Netflix using it to win awards.
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: You know there's people are going to say everything between here and there and when it comes down to it, you just kind of have to, like, take refuge in the company of the people that you know, understand why you were all there and why you all put all the effort you did into things that you created together.
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: Because these films, you know, and films are unique kind of in the creative world, you know, certainly there's photography projects and other creative projects where there's teams involved, but films usually there's a handful of people that you created them with, as well as the subjects and the people that you brought them to the world beside.
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: And when it comes down to it, like you can take refuge in your pure understanding of why you saw value in this project and if it was, because you know it was a commercial project.
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: You know something that you knew people would watch and might want awards like own it, because you know that's certainly part of this world as well.
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: But for me it's usually and that you know, I, from the very first time I engage with a project like a believe in the people that, a first and foremost, are telling their story with me as the subjects be, the people who come on and commit their time and effort to help and tell these stories with me, whether that's my DP or my producer or these people that you walk these experiences of production with, and then all the other people along a long way that kind of become entwined with it, from your editor to your you know, my composer became a really close friend and these people see value in these things and see value in putting their effort into these things that they believe in, and those are always going to be your biggest allies when it comes to like reminding yourself the value and the work that you do.
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: Is there an element of fact checking behind you know how, how and, if so, how much of an element is making sure that your the information that you're getting from the story and from the subjects is is accurate, correct, or are you looking at it in terms of well, all I want to do is tell a subjective story and therefore kind of whatever they perceive their story to be.
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: I'm going to run with, I mean if you're presenting facts, like about the world as understood by a large populace of people like he, should certainly make sure that you're like presenting the correct facts.
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: That's just responsible journalism.
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: I think that that should be a pillar of storytelling across the board.
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: But you know, if it's about someone's experience around something and what they think about it, then you know sky's the limit.
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that we all shouldn't be able to have our opinions about things.
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: I don't think we should be able to say that they're one way or another, but as many people are doing in this thing in the nation, fortunately.
• 53:13
  Speaker 2: But and we can think.
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: We can think whatever we want and we can feel whatever we want.
• 53:19
  Speaker 2: That's the beauty of being human.
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: Exactly and whether we're actually in control of our thoughts or not is a debateable topic in itself which we won't get into now.
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: But I think, from what I'm understanding of how you're talking about, you know the way to go about any kind of story is just with an intent and honesty and authenticity, whatever that might be, and it's okay if that intent is not to change the world and to you know be.
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: You know this, you know sacrosanct kind of storytelling.
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: That's okay.
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: If you you know you want to make money, if you just want to make money out of something and that's that is your pure goal of doing whatever you're doing, then okay.
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: I could put it, as long as you're honest and authentic with that and you're not trying to have some other pretense, right?
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: And I think that again, that comes through in people's work, it really does, it certainly does in yours.
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: We talked a little bit about journalism and I know that's kind of under your.
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: You know in your arena as well, and I feel like you know, in order to be a documentary filmmaker or to have a skill in that, you have to have a skill in journalism, almost right, do you think?
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: I think, do you think traditional journalism anyway, is dying at death and if not, why?
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's certainly in a decline, but I hope that we always retain some sort of bastion of journalistic integrity, you know, beyond just getting our news of the world from TikTok, because when we give up our understanding of fact and truth to people's opinions and perspectives on things, and that is when we will be totally lost.
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: And the thing that I really respect about journalism and filmmaking, I think it's a trait that they both you know documentary filmmaking.
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: The trait that they both kind of embody is the fact that you know, if you allow people to you know, share their honest opinion on the world as they walk through an experience like you, will be able to see the truth of it.
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: You know someone who's spending months and months doing a journalistic piece about something that happened is like getting all these different perspectives of different people around one central thing and similar to that in documentary filmmaking.
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: You know, some of the best documentary films out there are exploring the truth of one thing through the perspectives of all these other people and you, as the audience, can see how people interpret truth and, you know, find the truth of, you know, these experiences and these stories through that lens of total oh God, that's the word subjectivity, basically like having no opinion on what the story is.
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: You know, when I'm going in to make a film about, you know, the Ukraine war through the perspective of Olga and Milana, who lived through the shelling of Russian dissidents or whatever and Crimea, I wasn't going to make a film about how Russia is bad, you know, I think that the takeaway of adventure not of camp courage is that war is bad in general and that it impacts all these different people that you encounter throughout the film in different ways, and it allows you to create your own understanding of that truth in a way that you wouldn't otherwise understand, because you see it through the eyes of these people who experience it in a unique way.
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, I am a major believer in internalism and, you know, spending the time and the effort and the resources to actually go out and observe the world instead of painting it with your own color, like a lot of people choose to do these days, and even the mainstream media there's a really good way of putting it because I feel like even mainstream media now, because of the development I say development, the devolution, I guess of social media, or at least the pronunciation, and the real kind of growth of social media has driven the mainstream media to now kind of chase stories that can drive more outrage and therefore more views and therefore more money, essentially, and more power.
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: So I think you know, we really have to define the word journalism sometimes and what does that actually mean?
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: But the beauty with these types of stories and these short films and the way you're describing kind of how you want a viewer to kind of think about war in general or the greater kind of topic that over kind of oversees the subjective story that you're telling, in this case Kam Courage, really hit the nail on the head because this is exactly what I thought you know.
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: Turned to my office, what the fuck are we all doing, I mean, rather than seeing these really kind of like short outrageous stories, and obviously we see the destruction on news and we just we see little clips of you know, whatever location that we're in and whatever kind of story the news presenting, we see people suffering because it drives that outrage machine that viewers have inbuilt in them right when this is so different.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: This is where, you know, I wish people were just more, took the time to educate themselves more and took the time to kind of really see these stories and allow these really kind of intimate subjective stories to then drive their curiosity.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: Okay, you know, maybe, maybe what I'm seeing on the news in less than 60 seconds is not actually what's happening or it's not actually that bad, or it's even worse than that or whatever, and I think that's so important.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: I just I do worry that now, with social media as the driving force of ad news, essentially on what's going on in the world or what's not going on in the world, you know, I know people that have taken themselves off Twitter, for example, like cold turkey, and they, they, you know, talk to them, go.
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: You know, three, six months later they go.
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: My life hasn't changed, like you know.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: You get so sucked into this echo chamber.
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: You get so sucked into just kind of this your phone, essentially and you think then that is your whole world and you're driven by these, these clickbait news stories and then people throwing in their opinions and you just think, wow, the world is full of hate.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: And then you kind of withdraw from that, at least seeing films like your own.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: I think you know, there are really wonderful stories that are born out of tragedy and out of trauma and really kind of touching moments and touching narratives that we can all learn from.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: Right, and I think that's that that is the essence of journalism.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: Right, we want to get information, we want to learn from it and we hope to try and improve ourselves and the world.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: So well.
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think the root of storytelling as a whole, whether it's journalism or documentary filmmaking or whatever it might be like, the hope is that you're allowing people to understand their place and all this madness a little bit better so that, when it comes to making the decisions that impact the individuals around them, the community around them, the country around them, the world around them, like people, will make more informed decisions about how we all impact the world around us and hopefully, do that with a little bit more of a responsible, informed and, you know, with some better understanding of self and the place that each of us holds within this larger mosaic of the life that we're so lucky to be able to lead.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: Absolutely Well said.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: Well, I think that's a good place to wrap up.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: You know, I really do wish that there are more people like you in the world.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: Please keep on doing what you're doing and keep on doing it so fantastically well.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: I wish you the best of luck.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: What is next in the world of Max Lowe over the next six to 12 months?
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: What are we watching out for?
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 2: Well, got a couple of short things that are coming out in the next six to 12 months, but my next large project that I'm hoping will finish this year is about healthcare.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 2: Actually, another story close to home following my now fiance into the world of nurses the work that nurses do so stepping away from the adventure space and into a world I, another world that I am totally alien to, through the eyes of someone that I'm very close to.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: Fantastic.
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: I've just had first hand experience for a week of nursing.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: Well, sometimes I felt like I was nursing, but I've never been so inspired by a group of people.
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: I mean, honestly, I am nothing as a human compared to these people.
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: I just they're superheroes.
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: They really are and, to coin a cliche, but they really are.
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: They're just incredible people and some incredible just acts of kindness and compassion and the work, the amount of work they do, what's asked of them, that is just.
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: It blows my mind.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: So kudos to your fiance and I look forward to seeing what I'm sure will be a fascinating documentary.
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks so much, max.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: It is officially dark where you are now, so I hope you can go and enjoy a nice dinner and thank you, thank you once again for taking the time.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: I really appreciate it.
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you, matt, appreciate it.
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: All right Take care Cheers.