Meet Kate Kaminski

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kate Kaminski a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Kate, thank you so much for taking the time to share your lessons learned with us and we’re sure your wisdom will help many. So, one question that comes up often and that we’re hoping you can shed some light on is keeping creativity alive over long stretches – how do you keep your creativity alive?

Being around other creative people is always inspiring so I make time for spending time with other creatives. I meet monthly with a writer friend and am in almost daily contact with another novelist by text. We talk books and writing and help each other with solutions to writing problems or hurdles. I live with a painter and many of my closest friends are involved in the arts in some way, I have friends who do hand bookbinding, make pottery, craft handmade quilts and so on. Somehow just being around other people who are intent on creating keeps me creative.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

I’m an independent filmmaker and writer of many things, though screenplays and novels are my current focus. When I graduated from film school, I knew I wasn’t well-suited to the commercial filmmaking world and had no desire to move to the west coast, but I wasn’t sure where I would fit in or if I would be able to create films at all without that infrastructure. Then I met my partner Betsy (also a filmmaker) and the rest is indie film history. Together we have made dozens of films, including four DIY features that recently got picked up for distribution and are available worldwide, a 53-episode comedy web series called “Willard Beach” available on YouTube (the first produced in Maine), and releasing right now, a social media docuseries about Maine’s most misunderstood cryptid, the Comegato Weasel-Man, available only on Instagram and YouTube. Toward the end of 2024, we will have a double DVD set of two of our features coming out. The films are being re-mastered and we had a great time in the studio recording filmmaker commentary for them. “Trip” and “The Barghest” could both be described as either comedy or horror, depending on your perspective. So, as you can tell, our brand as filmmakers doesn’t fit into a tidy generic box and is decidedly indie in spirit and execution.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

It’s quite easy to give up on making art. What’s hard is believing in your own vision, being willing to take risks and learning from each project as you go. You have to be willing to fail because failure teaches you, in the moment and later. Sometimes it teaches you what doesn’t work and it’s always humbling, but it also becomes part of your story. We always joke about one particular screening of a documentary we made a few years ago where the only people in the audience were us and the two subjects of the documentary. Taking those failures and turning them into part of your own story as an artist is the only answer. When the pandemic hit, we were convinced it would be the end of our being able to make films. But not only did I write two novels since 2020, my partner and I managed to make a 5-minute short horror film “Dummyhead” in 2020 (on iPhone), a 12-minute award-winning dark comedy short that played the festival circuit in 2021, and now we’re full-on back into it with our social media docuseries “Tracking the Comegato.” As a former professor of filmmaking, my best advice is always to use whatever resources you have. After all, wishing for more won’t get you more. And you don’t need a RED camera or a crew of 50 people to make a film. But your very best resource is always your willingness to dig deep, take the leap and keep learning.

What do you do when you feel overwhelmed? Any advice or strategies?

The state of the world is overwhelming, let’s face it. And outside influences can definitely (and negatively) impact and sap creative energy. But internal influences can do the same thing. I have two basic strategies for overcoming that feeling of “I can’t do this.” First is to take time away, get outside, walk it off and ground myself. I live in an urban area but it’s adjacent to the ocean and forest, so I’m lucky to be able to choose which environment will most fill me back up. But even just a walk around my hood can clear the cobwebs and help me face the blank page or figure out how to solve a problem in the edit suite. My other strategy is much more mundane, which is to lose myself in someone else’s story, reading or watching a movie or even a game of tennis. There’s something about focusing on something outside myself that can loosen the knots and get me back into the flow.

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Image Credits

Gitgo Productions

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