First-time filmmaker and former aerial skier Katie Bender tells IF about bringing the story of Lydia Lassila to the screen.
"I looked up to Lydia from when I was 13 as a young gymnast. She was a few years my senior, and when I won a competition at her local gymnastics club she put a medal around my neck. At the time she had won national championships, and she became an inspiration for me".
"A couple of years later, she moved to my gym club and we started training in the same squad. So when she transitioned into aerial skiing, it planted a seed. We were very similar types of gymnast – only a certain breed goes into a sport like aerial skiing".
"I ended up training with her on the Australian aerial ski team. There were about ten of us for the best part of seven years. She was again my senior, and I was a rookie at a time when the Australian team was very dominant".
"The team was Jacqui Cooper, Alisa Camplin, Lydia Lassila and Elizabeth Gardner, who were in the top six in the world at the time, all fighting for the number one position".
"I was on the sidelines, training but not really being able to compete. I had a lot of knee injuries – I've had six knee operations, I blew my knee three times when I was a rookie, and that's when I started fiddling about [with film], because you need a little bit of reward in your career and I just wasn't getting that".
"When I was an athlete I had a real passion for movie soundtracks. I used to train to them all the time. When I quit skiing I knew straightaway that I wanted to go to a film and digital media school in LA because I had an obsession with movie trailers. I went and studied in LA, and then my first ever job was interning at Trailer Park. I ended up working there for two years – three years altogether including my time as an intern".
"A bit later, my visa had run out in LA and I was going through a transition where I was really missing sport and I really wanted to go work for ESPN but I couldn't stay in America because ESPN is located in Connecticut".
"At the time Lydia had just returned to the sport as a mum defending her Olympic title, and she was training in Utah, so I caught the plane over there and was hanging out with her. She told me that she wanted to do this trick at the next Olympics that only the men had done before".
"Obviously I understood the complexity behind the trick, and understanding her backstory and knowing how inspirational it already was, I knew that it had the potential for a feature length documentary. So I asked for her story right there on the spot. I committed to it, and I've been doing this since 2012".
"There were three private investors, plus I was eligible to register with the Documentary Australia Foundation and through that I was able to submit to philanthropic grants, and I then met Catherine Brown who's the CEO of the Lord Mayor's Charitable Foundation. They've been one of our biggest supporters".
"One of the biggest problems when I finally got some funding, a year and a half after I first spoke to Lydia, was that she had started her Olympic campaign towards Sochi. There were times [where] she couldn't have the distraction. She could have easily pulled the plug at any moment. She could have hurt herself, or motherhood could have gotten in the way. It was a big risk".
"A lot of the film is also archive [footage], and that was one of the biggest battles in terms of financing, because sport archives are not cheap. We're an independent production, we're not ESPN, we're not Channel 7. You're not allowed to shoot at the Olympics, for instance, so it was all sourced footage".
"I want to continue to make sports films, because they combine my two passions. We're a sporting nation, and our athletes need to have a voice, and I think TV sometimes doesn't tell the stories properly. That's the nature of the beast, because they turn around stories so quickly. When sports films are done well – as in Senna, which is just my favourite film in the world – they're powerful, and I think we need more of them in Australia".
The Will to Fly opens today in limited release.