Benjamin Meade

The son of a Baptist inner city minister (father) and a music teacher (mother), Benjamin Meade grew up in Kansas City, Missouri. At an young age he began immersing himself with music, movies, and readings on contemporary philosophy. He attended the Music Conservatory in Kansas City studying six years with the piano, guitar, and several woodwind instruments. He and his two brothers formed the musical ensemble "Tuck Point" when he was 15. An Eagle Scout, at the age of 17 he put himself through college by playing in several different rock bands and working at an auto repair shop while pursuing a degree in filmmaking at Central Missouri State University. After graduating in 1977, he met and worked with Stan Brakhage in Boulder, Colorado for several months learning experimental film technique and aesthetic. Soon after, he was offered an entry level job at Universal Pictures in Los Angeles but soon returned to the mid-west hoping for a film community to develop. Discouraged from lack of employment opportunities in the film industry where he lived, he took a job as a financial services consultant with New England Financial and remained there for nearly three decades. He became partner of the firm at age 28 while spending time studying interests from chiropractic to law and earned a masters degree in American History, then a Ph D in Film and Theatre from the University of Kansas in 1999. While at Kansas, he again met Stan Brakhage who worked with him in the development of many short experimental films. While presenting a paper in Denmark in 1999, he met Laszlo Tarnay of Pecs, Hungary who invited him to teach there the following year. While teaching, he met Hungarian Filmmaker Andras Suranyi and made the controversial but touching film Vakvagany (2002) in 2001 (acquired by the Sundance Channel). He completed Das Bus in 2003 (acquired by the Sundance Channel), and 2004 co-produced Confederate States of America, directed by Kevin Willmott which played at The Sundance Film Festival and was released by IFC Films. He then collaborated with crime novelist James Ellroy on Bazaar Bizarre in 2005 (now re-released by Troma Entertainment) the story of serial killer Bob Berdella. His film American Stag (2006) was an interrogation of early American Pornography. This was followed by the critically acclaimed American Music: Off The Record (2008) featuring Noam Chomsky, Jackson Brown and Douglas Rushkoff along with more than 50 music acts including Les Paul, Ray Price, and Wanda Jackson. He followed this with The Elders: Alive and Live in Ireland (2008), a rock and roll music epic, then completed Lifelong Roadtrip, a film about the Nace Brothers Band in 2009. He then produced The Kansas City Murder Factory-Act 1 for Mike B. Rollen (2011), In 2012 he released a compilation of his shorts films made with Stan Brakhage and several others without collaboration as well as interviews with his icons Ray Harryhausen, Tom Savini, Stan Brakhage, William S. Burroughs, and Lars Von Trier-to name a few. The title of the compilation is "Mentallusions: Radical Eclectic Films of Benjamin Meade". In 2012 his book "Experimental Film: The Missing Frames" was published. In 2012 he shot a film in Haiti entitled "Optimistic Chaos", which chronicles he and singer/songwriter Danny Cox as they experienced the poverty and lawlessness in the Northwest part of the island. It was released in 2013. In 2015 he released Woke Up This Mornin' in the Arkansas Delta, a gonzo style film that chronicles his travels in the Arkansas Delta from 2009-2014. His work is referred to by critics as "experimental documentary". In 2014 he then turned to music recording with an "analogue" set of four (4) instrumental tunes with members of the world renowned Alloy Orchestra, Roger C. MIller (also of Mission of Burma), Ken Winokur and Terry Donahue. The music was a synthesis of experimental/avant-garde/junk percussion/electronic under the name "Town Topics" on the Cosmic Cowboy Music label. That same year he produced the only solo concert performed by Roye Albrighton, the front man for the legendary rock band "Nektar" releasing the recording in 2015 on his C C S label. From 2015 to current he continued to produce films for new filmmakers in Missouri and Arkansas. In 2017, he completed the hand painted camera-less 16mm film- Laughing Crying Blues, (a tribute to Stan Brakhage). He is a co-founder of the Kansas International Film Festival and former chairman of the Hot Springs Documentary Film Institute. Outside of the arts Meade founded Casas Por Cristo, a missions organization that builds homes for the poor in Juarez, Mexico. He is a retired Professor of Film and Digital Media at Avila University in Kansas City, Missouri. He is a fellow at the Society of the Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image in Copenhagen, Denmark, and a professor of film at Janus Pannonius University at Pecs" Hungary. He is the owner of Cosmic Cowboy Studio in Fayetteville, Arkansas an analogue facility for group, solo, and film soundtrack recording and film and video production. His film company is Corticrawl Productions. In 2019 he founded Cosmic Cowboy Records, LLC a record label dedicated to showcasing marginalized musicians and new talent as well as re-issuing out of print material in demand. His current film project is entitled "Cate Bros" Arkansas Rock & Soul Royalty. He and partner Mary Gillcoatt-Crouch reside in Fayetteville, Arkansas.