Father the Flame

I grew up without a father living at home, which left me with a pronounced longing for a sense of stability and purpose. Meanwhile I found myself helplessly drawn to the arts as a place of deep fulfillment and I eventually committed my life to them. But when the time came that I learned I would soon be a father, I struggled to find answers to the many questions and uncertainties I still had swirling around within me. This film was born at the intersection of this phase of my life with stumbling into a largely overlooked pastime: pipe smoking.

I first picked up a pipe while walking to dinner with my wife past a tobacco store in our neighborhood. We never had gone in before, but for some reason on that day I knew I wanted to get a pipe. On my first light the pipe seemed to speak to me from a far away place. The way the smoke drifted off to the sky and the tobacco glowed a deep red, it seemed elemental, connecting me to nature itself. Previously I’d only thought about pipes the way most people today do - possibly a bad habit and a relic from a generation gone by. But now I started to see something deeper in the bowl that I wanted to explore. Why has it gone out of fashion? What is it about the iconic nature of the pipe that carries such associations of a father or grandpa? What is behind that mysterious allure to smoking itself?

As you enter most subcultures you find a mixed bag of people and paradigms, but they’re always centered around a common set of core experiences. For the pipe world I was surprised to see a diverse group of people that spanned the globe and all manner of class strata coming together around simple ideals of letting go of differences, slowing down and thinking deeper. In that contemplative headspace I saw themes of fatherhood, legacy and spirituality repeatedly emerge. For example, in the Native American tradition the pipe sprung from nothing less than the heart of Man’s relationship with the Divine. So if the pipe is a symbol for a tradition that has been all but left behind, I began to wonder if there are other traditions we as a society have let fade that need to be remembered, or others still that we carry on that need to be re-evaluated.

The characters from around the world that populate this film have taught me more about lasting values, fatherhood, and even love itself than I ever imagined possible. What began as a short film exploration of a single pipe maker made way for a spiritual journey in the form of feature documentary that would take seven years and six countries to complete. It evolved organically from a very wide scope to distill a set of universally relatable human experiences.

If there is one take away from the film I hope audiences receive, it is the invitation to slow down in an age of nowness and speed, to reflect on what previous generations have handed us and where we are taking that towards the future as individuals and as a civilization. I’m excited for you to take this somewhat unexpected journey.