Through Ben's Eyes

When I first saw Ben's art on Instagram in October 2023, I instantly knew whoever was doing it had a story. My first thought was "who is this person? Who decided that they are going to do this? What is Ben's story?" As a looked into Ben more I found that there were a lot of news articles, YouTube videos and even other documentaries about Ben's work. But I found that none of the them answered my questions. Especially "who is Ben?" At the time I was living in Italy and I was actually taking a trip to London later that month. So while I was in London for a week with some friends I went to the Millennium Bridge and saw his art for myself, with the hope that I might bump into Ben on the bridge. I didn't meet Ben that day but I was amazed at just how many Gum paintings there were. I knew then that when I moved to London, I'd have to try and connect with him and tell his story and I had to do it differently.

I moved to London in January 2024, and I went to the Millennium Bridge at any opportunity I got. I think I went a total of 12 times in January alone. I kept noticing new pictures and that some of the old ones had been cleaned, but still no Ben. I thought that I'd just reach out to him. At the same time I met Zoe-Rose. I told her about Ben and then a few days after meeting her I sent her a very long text message asking her to Produce the documentary. One cup of coffee in a cafe later, she agreed and we both agreed that this film needed to be different. We wanted it to be shot differently to the other films and videos about Ben, we wanted to focus more on him and his life rather than just his chewing gum art and process and we noticed that the other films about Ben were predominantly made by men and/or majority male crews, which led us to work with an exclusively female and gender queer crew. Everything that could possibly be different about this documentary is different.

Zoe and I finally got to meet Ben in February at a pub in Muswell Hill. We had so many questions for him! Going into meeting him I knew he'd ask us what made our film different and I had all these different answer but none of them felt right. In our conversation that evening, Ben spoke about how his chewing gum art has become a reflection of the world around him. The lives of the people who stop and talk to him, the requests they give him and the conversations they have. The chewing gum art is about them not him. He then told us about his tiles, which are a visual diary that he has been keeping for the last 10 years. He's painted 600 tiles in that time. He told us the tiles are a reflection of him, his friends and his family. His life. That's when I knew how to answer the question. Once Zoe and I had finished our questions for Ben we ask if he had any questions for us and his first question was "Why do you want to make this film and what makes your film different?" To which I answered; "I feel like the other films that have been made about you have been chewing gum art. They have been the world's impression of you and of your work. I would like to make a tile about you. It should be a film about who you are. Your life and capture you because I think you deserve that because you give so much to everyone else. I want to honour you with this film." After I said that Ben sat back in his chair and smiled.

Now that we've come to the end of the process and we are submitting the film to festivals, I can safely say in my opinion we did what we set out to do. We told the story of who Ben is and we did it differently. I couldn't have done any of this without the amazingly talented crew of women and gender queer people behind the film!

Produced by Zoe-Rose Herbert (she/her)
Cinematography by Amalia Pop (she/her)
2nd Camera Operation by Georgia Sheward (she/her)
Edited by Rainn Mowris (they/he)
Sound Mix & Music by Lucie Tenet (she/her)
5.1 Mix by Guldem Masa (they/them)

Thank you for your consideration and we hope you enjoy the film.