PHOTO COURTESY OF NANCY ADAMS Ames native and current ENS Paris-Saclay graduate film student Caroline Baum, left, and her mother Betsy, right, recently visited Marshalltown as part of Caroline’s research for a project on Jean Seberg.

Caroline Baum is a short-haired young woman from central Iowa currently living in Paris who’s passionate about pursuing filmmaking as a career, so it’s no surprise that she feels a kinship of sorts with the late Jean Seberg, the actress turned activist who put Marshalltown on the map when she rose to international stardom in the late 1950s.

Baum, who graduated from Ames High School and obtained a bachelor’s degree from the University of Iowa before studying film at ENS Paris-Saclay as a grad student, said she came to the world of cinema “a bit later” when she discovered French New Wave films at Iowa. It was there she first saw Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless.”

“I was like ‘Who is this American girl?’ And I literally found it just by chance. I didn’t know she was from Marshalltown. I found out she was from Marshalltown after watching the film,” Baum said. “And the more you dig into the story, there’s just more and more and more. She lived such a big life, and I loved the fact that she was from Iowa. And I can’t believe it’s not talked about more.”

After watching “Breathless” and another 60s classic, “Rosemary’s Baby,” repeatedly that year, Baum joked that she cut off all of her hair, and Seberg entered into her consciousness. She started watching videos and interviews and reading about her, and when she started her master’s, Baum decided she wanted to do a project focused on “this Iowa-Paris connection.”

Although she’s now living across the pond, she was recently home for break and decided to make the short drive east on Highway 30 to learn more about Seberg in her hometown with help from local Jean expert Nancy Adams, who is always happy to accommodate anyone interested in the iconic actress.

“I saw that that was a really insane parallel, so that’s kind of what set me off on this goose chase, and I just kind of showed up in Marshalltown. I went to a library and I started asking for archives, and they directed me to Nancy. And we’ve spent like the past two days together,” Baum said. “The wealth of knowledge and the sheer scope of the archive she assembled is incredible. I could’ve been here for even another week or so just looking through all that and putting things together, and I know people have. She’s definitely helped a lot of people with their projects.”

And unsurprisingly, the admiration between the two is mutual, as Adams was quick to reciprocate it.

“It was a real pleasure spending time with Caroline and her mom, and I’m so grateful Joa (LaVille, youth services director at the Marshalltown Public Library) put us in touch. And I’m genuinely excited and, yes, relieved that a new generation is embracing Jean,” Adams said.

Seberg has enjoyed renewed interest over the past few years both locally and nationally with the release of a Kristen Stewart-starring biopic, a documentary titled “Jean Seberg: Actress, Activist, Icon” and even a recent reader’s theater play performed in Marshalltown, so finding a new angle for a creative project focused on her may be a bit of a challenge. Baum said she’s looking primarily at the 1970s — by then, Seberg had all but abandoned Hollywood and opted to act mostly in European films while also enduring the FBI’s COINTELPRO operation aimed at harassing and discrediting her.

“I’m trying to think what the new angle would be. I’ll get back to you on that,” Baum said. “I’m also not trying to do something extremely biographical, but (it’s) to be determined… I’m also here taking a lot of footage of landscapes. I’m really intrigued with her perception of home and being American and then also leaving at such a young age — like, what her relationship with Iowa and with Marshalltown and with the States is and maybe showing that through landscapes could be interesting.”

Looking forward, Baum will be heading back to Paris soon and hopes to stay there for the foreseeable future, but she didn’t rule out moving back to the U.S. someday. She’d like to keep working in film and direct documentaries, but she’s also open to working in production in some capacity. And she isn’t ruling out another trip to Marshalltown.

“I think I absolutely will (come back). Just in this past week, I’m like ‘There’s a lot going on,'” she said.

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Contact Robert Maharry

at 641-753-6611 ext. 255 or

rmaharry@timesrepublican.com.