Reel Talent

As a Colby student, nationally recognized documentary filmmaker James "Huey" Coleman '70 produced a modest eight-millimeter piece with the Art Department's Abbott Meader, but when he graduated he wanted to be a photographer because, he said, "It seemed easier than filmmaking." Coleman studied the history of American camera craft, knew how to work in a darkroom and "knew a lot about photography."
That experience 25 years ago was good background for the most recent of his more than 30 films, Honest Vision: A Portrait of Todd Webb, a documentary chronicling Webb's 50-year career as an artist with a camera. Webb, a resident of Bath, Maine, since 1978, earned a reputation for his black-and-white photographs of Paris and New York in the 1940s and '50s and of the American West when he retraced the gold rush trails by foot, bicycle and motor scooter between 1955 and 1965. Webb's goal--simply to photograph what moved him--is underscored and mirrored by the film, which conveys the drama and integrity of Webb's photos and his friendships with other artists, among them Alfred Stieglitz and Georgia O'Keeffe. Five years in the making, Honest Vision portrays a man who, at 91, remains wry, warm and engaging.
Films by Huey, which is also the name of Coleman's Portland, Maine-based business, have been shown at universities and colleges across the country, including Colby, and have won prizes at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, American Film Festival and the National Educational Film and Video Festival. Honest Vision received a Silver Plaque award from the Chicago International Film Festival. But like many independent filmmakers, Coleman spends a lot of time looking for funding. He says that to be fair to his wife, Judy Wentzell, and youngest daughters Sarah, 15, and Irene, 11, he wants to "get the films to pay for themselves," and in the future he may look at commercial investors instead of nonprofit funding. In the meantime he's distributing Honest Vision to video and TV markets nationally, doing as many screenings as possible and entering film festivals to get in the mix of things.
Still active in the artist-in-residence program in Maine schools, Coleman has made 10- to 20-day stays in as many as 15 schools a year, helping hundreds of kids make movies. He's the director of the Maine Student Film and Video Festival, and the documentary Best of Fifteen Years, made under his direction by and for young people, was broadcast on Maine Public Television two years ago.
"Film is a collaborative art form," Coleman said, looking forward to his first Colby Jan Plan this winter. Instead of 12 people making 12 videos, he'll conduct a group collaboration.
"One person may be better at scripts, another at editing, but each is introduced to all the parts, the process of how it goes together. They need to learn how to work together. They'll end up with a ten- to fifteen-minute film," said Coleman, who has given workshops on independent filmmaking and documentary production from Machias to San Francisco.
"Now I feel I can make any film I want to. You get a certain confidence in your own ability," he said, thinking about tackling the wedding music of the sizable Cambodian population in Portland or perhaps another portrait of an artist. His confidence, he said, "comes from Honest Vision and working with Todd Webb--he did what he wanted to do. I want to do bigger films."