About Becca & Ben
Ben shaking President Carter’s hand after accepting an award for Border Stories.
Ben and Becca after a late-night screening of Lebanon at Upstate Films in 2010. Photo credit: Jonah Rosenberg
Ben and Becca not only share a mutual love of cinema; they met working in an arthouse movie theater.
Both graduates of Bard College, Becca moved to Providence to pursue a degree in Cultural Anthropology at Brown, where she studied sociolinguistics, media and performance theory, social movements, and U.S. culture. Her (very fun) master’s research took her to France to follow cross-cultural performances of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and her subsequent work focused on social movement theory and pre-Occupy activism. After grad school, she returned to the world of film exhibition and worked with a fantastic crew at Shadow Distribution, Railroad Square Cinema, and the Maine International Film Festival before moving back to the Hudson Valley, where she worked as Associate Director of Upstate Films and Director of Development at Hudson Hall.
Click here to read an interview with Becca in FLAIR
(Female Leaders in Arts and Industry Revealed)
After college, Ben returned to his home in Nashville to work in television until friends enticed him to take a break from his job and hit the road to make a documentary. With Clara Long and John Drew, he traveled the entire US/Mexico border to shoot and edit Border Stories, which won the prestigious human rights award at Internews Media Awards in Paris in 2008. After making the film, he left his career in television for good, traveled back to the east coast and took a job in the Hudson Valley alongside Becca and the crew at Upstate Films.
Oscar (age 6) helping out with lobby redecorating
Over time, Ben & Becca went from working and watching late night movies together, to organizing a documentary festival and co-teaching a high school film course, to living together, hiking together, cooking together, and adopting a cat.
They got married in the Tennessee hills in 2013.
In addition to co-running The Screening Room with Becca, Ben currently edits and composes original music for the YouTube show Acorn to Arabella: Journey of a Wooden Boat.
The two are thrilled to have their spirited 9 year-old son, Oscar, in their lives. If you come in sometime, he may just pop out from his cozy nook under the projection booth to say hi.