By James McConville
MONMOUTH BEACH – Filmmaker Dylan Hansen-Fliedner, 24, grew up in a house across the street from the Atlantic Ocean. An upstairs window offered a glimpse of the blue water and the sound of waves crashing on the beach was always near. Hansen-Fliedner’s connection was inevitable: the name Dylan translates to, “from the sea” in Welsh.
So it seemed fitting that following a showing at the Seattle International Film Festival for his recent award-winning documentary “Finding Babel,” that focuses on the life and wrongful execution of renowned Russian author Isaac Babel, Hansen-Fliedner returned to his hometown to direct a music video that highlights local properties still recovering from Super Storm Sandy. Though more than 4,000 miles apart, Monmouth Beach can now count a connection to Moscow.
Born and raised in Monmouth Beach, Hansen-Fliedner attended Monmouth Beach Elementary School and Shore Regional High School before moving on as an honors student to the University of Pennsylvania’s Cinema Studies and English program with a creative writing concentration.
As a young boy with a vast imagination, Hansen-Fliedner honed in on artistic ventures. When the weather turned cold, Hansen-Fliedner turned to films, often enjoying the experience as bonding time with family.
“I cherished watching terrible old horror movies on VHS with my dad,” he said. “My mom and I would look forward to the latest art-house or foreign movie that made its way to Red Bank.
“It offered such an enticing way to get outside of myself and see how other people see the world,” he said.
The pull of the world beyond Patten and Ocean avenues led Hansen-Fliedner to a passion that offered him the chance to see his small-town surroundings from a mature perspective.
“When you live around a very small group of people, you tend to look at each other’s lives very closely,” said Hansen-Fliedner. It was this attention to detail that sparked his interest and talent for storytelling.
The environment for creating art is often one of the most integral parts of the creative process. “I do my best writing on the back porch of my mother’s house in Monmouth Beach, with the sound of the ocean in the background.”
His experiences, as well as his ability to “communicate under-the-surface details” in his storytelling, have led him to work on two productions that differ greatly in scope and story but share a common thread of humanity and awareness.
The first production, “Driving Not Knowing,” for which Dylan was co-director, co-cinematographer and co-editor, was shown in a limited release in 2015, with a digital release on the way. A nuanced film about two friends who spend a weekend together considering their unsettled futures, it was inspired by feelings of uncertainty familiar to many early 20-somethings. The title, “Driving Not Knowing,” comes from a song written for the film by Jay Jadick, co-director and actor.
“To me, ‘Driving Not Knowing’ is sort of like being on a very long drive in the space between your destinations when you’re just kind of floating,” Hansen-Fliedner said.
Hansen-Fliedner, now based in Brooklyn, served as co-editor and associate producer of his second project “Finding Babel.” Written by and starring Andrei Malaev-Babel, the film subject’s grandson, “Finding Babel” features the voice of Tony Award winner Liev Schreiber. The documentary searches for the truth behind Babel’s often subversive writings and eventual imprisonment and execution in 1940. “Finding Babel” was the recipient of the Special Jury Prize at the 2016 Moscow Jewish Film Festival.
“Working on a documentary is essentially like going to graduate school on a given topic,” he said. “All around the world today, people are silenced. Free expression is threatened. We have to do everything we can to stop that.”
Recently serving as director of the music video set in Monmouth Beach, Hansen-Fliedner and cinematographer Kenny Suleimanagich document remaining damage from Super Storm Sandy, showing parts of the town still reeling from the 2012 superstorm.
“Art’s duty is to communicate some aspect of the world around us,” he said. “Movies allow us to see just how wrong other people feel too, and hopefully show us ways to be better humans.”
In Monmouth Beach, the ocean waters continue to reach to the horizon, signaling for Hansen-Fliedner a limitless future ahead.
