Daniel Lir/Bayou Bennett
Filmmakers
Web: dreamteamdirectors.com
Contact: [email protected]
Most Recent: Destination Angels
Husband and wife filmmaking duo Daniel Lir and Bayou Bennett of Dream Team Directors recently won the Leonardo Award at the DaVinci International Film Festival for Destination Angels, a short documentary also directed by Jim Sampas, produced by Dru DeCaro, and inspired by the groundbreaking American writer and Beatnik pioneer Jack Kerouac. Seattle folk artist Christopher Mansfield of Fences was asked by Kerouac’s estate to write five songs, accompanied by five poems by Kerouac for the film, in which Mansfield and musical collaborators visit some of Kerouac’s old West Coast stomping grounds.
“I met Dru DeCaro, and he said I got this project, I need a director, look at the trailer. It was like a pause moment. Kerouac was so important to me growing up. He opened my whole universe to what’s possible with creativity,” Lir says. “I think Destination Angels is a cool project, because Chris [Mansfield] incorporated organic sounds—like ripping pages—into the music along the way. I love how committed they were to finding what was important to themselves and Jack. It was not a conventional journey. You have to abandon roadmaps sometimes to make something that is going to be creatively important.”
Not just a film about Kerouac, Destination Angels contains messages of searching for oneself and finding meaning, and about sobriety, with which Mansfield has publicly discussed his own struggles. “Almost every project we do is a passion project,” Bennett says. “It has to be something we believe in. Filmmaking is powerful, and the Kerouac project turned into a film about sobriety as well, which, for us, was an important message.” Lir adds, “We wanted to make something that was relatable, because everyone is dealing with depression and anxiety to some extent, just living in this world, and some of us use drugs or alcohol to deal with things. I think the movie approached that in an interesting way.”
