Bellevue Lifestyle had the opportunity to connect with local filmmaker Brett Smith to learn about his new film, Freedom’s Path. The movie is slated to open February 3 for Black History Month in a national theatrical release with AMC and Regal theaters.
1) Share a bit about your background.
I was born and raised in Bellevue, back when it was just a quiet sleepy suburb. Flash forward to today and I am married with four kids, still in Bellevue. Life is busy and hard and crazy, and messy and incredibly magical.
2) How did you get started in filmmaking?
I never consciously told myself that I would become a filmmaker. I didn’t take any middle school or high school video production classes. I think I was too afraid.
My friends and I would ‘borrow’ the family high-8 camcorder and make wrestling videos on my trampoline. Once we mastered the art of capturing a clothesline, jackknife, and good ol’ fashioned dropkick, we graduated to making short films – always goofy spoofs of the popular films of the day.
The older I got, the more dramatic the stories were that I wanted to make. Eventually, my friends told me they weren’t interested in crying on camera, or giving some massively serious monologue. That’s when I knew I was in no man’s land and needed to start connecting with local actors.
3) What was the inspiration for this particular film?
Freedom’s Path is a film that I’ve been working on for twelve extremely long years. There were many inspirations that contributed to this story. Some have come from personal experiences, some from classic books and films; Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Red Badge of Courage and Glory. I had also never seen a film that centered around some of the 250,000 free African-Americans living in the South during the Civil War.
I was really inspired by unknown and forgotten voices. Voices lost to memory and time. I wanted to tell a story of everyday people going through extraordinary circumstances.
More than anything though, I wanted to tell a story about the power of humanity. Of learning to overcome preconceived notions in order to see people for the unique individuals that they are.
I am proud to say that Freedom’s Path is the first narrative film to highlight and center around a group of free people in this era, and I certainly hope it is not the last.
4) What can you share about your "behind the scenes" experience on this project?
I’ll start by saying that we chose to shoot the film in northwest Arkansas, during the fall months. The reason being that the weather is supposed to be fairly moderate, sunny, 65-75 degrees, beautifully colored leaves on the trees, etc. However, we ended up getting the second worst fall on record. It was absolutely brutal.
We had a tornado, floods, mud, biblical amounts of rain, snow, hail, lightning, multiple weeks of ten-degree weather, even water moccasins swimming in the river with us during a scene (ahhhhhh!). It was an adventure in every sense of the word.
5) Tell us about the release of the film.
I am excited to say that the film will be released Friday, February 3rd in AMC and Regal Theaters nationwide!
We have partnered with Byron Allen’s HBCU GO free- streaming digital platform- the leading media provider for the nation’s 107 Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
A portion of all ticket sales from the theatrical release of the film will be donated to the United Negro College Fund (UNCF) for under-funded HBCUs throughout the United States.
Naturally, one of the key themes of the film is freedom: Mental, emotional, and physical. We believe that education and freedom are inextricably connected, and so this giveback during Black History Month is really special to us.
6) Is there anything else you'd like to share?
I would love for your readers to know that this film is as independent as they come. There is no major studio backing this film (yet). Rather, it was made by a core group of Washington filmmakers.
In fact, I found the financing for the film by sending out over 4,300 cold emails. It took me two and half years to do, but through that process I found ten incredible people who believed in me and believed in the story.
There wasn’t a single thing about this film that was easy – but I don’t think I would have had it any other way.