Full Frame 2008 will be held April 3-6I first started going to film festivals in North Carolina early in this decade when the Full Frame Film Festival (coming up the first week in April in Durham), then called the Doubletake Documentary festival, showed a three-part biography of Vietnam-era President Lyndon Johnson. I felt a bit decadent sitting in a movie theater in the middle of an April afternoon watching the doc's three fascinating parts.
Since then, I've encountered many films at Full Frame (and other festivals) that became part of my personal canon, those favorites I watch a number of times and foresee watching again.
Among them, I discovered Steve James (best known for "Hoop Dreams") who premiered his odd, touching documentary about a disturbed young man named "Stevie," and later, "Reel Paradise," at Full Frame. "Reel Paradise," fit a recurring subset of films at various Full Frame fests--movies about movies. It details Indy film producer John Pierson's odd sojurn in the Fiji Islands, where he bought a movie house. He says he went there with his family to get away, but he didn't get far away from movies. He exhibited them free for the Islanders, showing films as different as "Jackass" and Buster Keaton's wonderful silent, "Steamboat Bill, Jr." At the same time, James made a documentary of the whole adventure. Movies within movies.
John Pierson and his family in Fiji. Doc-maker Steve James made "Reel Paradise" about their time there showing free films to the islanders. Photo by Amy C. Elliott.Movies about movies appear on Full Frame's schedule every year, sometimes making up an unanounced subtheme.
This year there is a doc about horror meister and promoter William Castle. Castles 50s promotions for horror fare such as "Macabre," "The House on Haunted Hill," and the "Tingler" were better than the cheesy films themselves. "Macabre," for instance, insured movie-goers against death from fright and some movie houses wired up seats to give patrons an extra thrill for shows of the "Tingler."
Two unconventional movies about movies are on the schedule this year, "Symbiopsychotaxiplasm Take One" and "Take Two" by director William Greaves, as well as a short about an Indian with a cinema cart and 100-year-old projector.
One year I sat through the long "Phantom of the Cinemateque," about Henri Langlois, a film I subsequently rented from Netflix and recorded off of TCM and watched twice more. If you're a cinemaphile, it fascinates with its portrait of a man and the institution he created, both responsible for saving much film heritage, from sole surviving prints of many films since the silent era to artifacts ranging from costumers to the dessicated head of the dead Bates mother in "Psycho.
I stayed up late to catch "The Z-Channel," about the cinema-lover's cable channel that pre-dated our VCR/DVD/TCM/TIVO culture. Suffused with generous clips from the Z-Channel featured, and with interviews from Quentin Tarantino, F.X. Feeney, directors, actors and actresses, it captures also the tragic story of the channel's programmer and director, and his doomed love of cinema above all else. This went on my list of movies-I-love. I could watch it again tonight.
Then, just last year, best-selling author Walter Moseley (
below, photo by RWright), who is on the Full Frame board, introduced us to "I'm Your Man," Liam Lumson's portrait of song writer Leonard Cohen. I'd heard Cohen songs all my life, but this exposure to his poetry won me over, with the aid of performances by Rufus Wainwright, Nick Cave, and Jarvis Cocker, among others. Their interpretations, particularly Wainwright's, give you new insight into the how a singer can redefine a song and make it his or her own. Or at least..shared. Moseley himself noted the odd way this film invites you back, especially the performances. Thanks for turning us on to it, Mr. Moseley.
Another category that could be a subcategory of films at Full Frame, just about year after year, is boxing. That probably says more about the role heavyweight title fights played in American culture for most of the last century than it does about Full Frame. Ken Burns premiered his work in progress about the first black heavyweight, Jack Johnson the same year we saw the doc about the two Joe Luis/Max Schmeling fights that preceded WWII.
This year we have Greaves' "The Fight," chronicling the incredible pop cultural hoopla that surrounded the first Ali/Frazier battle.
Someone should consider doing a doc showing the huge cultural impact boxing had on America throughout the 20th century and its incredible decline in the 21st. Today, I'm pressed to name the current heavyweight champion (s), or any division champions.
Yet Jack Dempsey, Joe Luis, Rocky Marciano, Ali, George Foreman, Frazier, were all household names during their prime and remain well known today.
That first political bio of LBJ that drew me to the doc fest initially was followed by others on many political subjects, including one on Barry Goldwater, the conservative Senator from Arizona who ran for President against LBJ in 1964. I sat directly in front of Goldwater's son, a former Congressman, his daughter, and his granddaughter, who made the movie. It brought tears to the eyes of both son and daughter several times. Seeing while hearing their whispered comments and close enough to feel the wave of their emotions was a heady experience.
Then, there are the celebrities. It's not unusual to have an encounter at Full Frame such as seeing Ken Burns pass Michael Moore in the hall, each waving to the other without stopping; seeing Martin Scorsese lean back in his chair as he takes questions form a small group of reporters and students, or to see "Tootsie" director Sidney Pollock enjoying his lunch and arguing a point with a friend, or have a star such as Danny DeVito touch you on the shoulder as he passes through the lunch crowd on awards day.
Above, DeVito works the lunch crowd at Full Frame 2006. Photo by RWright.ARR
So, go already. Film festivals are not only a great way to gorge yourself on film over three or four days. They're an experience in themselves.
Tickets are available at:
http://www.fullframefest.org/boxoffice/
Allan Maurer
Labels: full frame celebrities film festival durham april
At 2 pm on Saturday, April 26 (NEW DATE & TIME), RiverRun in Winston Salem, NC, will host A Conversation with Pam Grier, featuring a discussion about her career, film highlights and the presentation of her Master of Cinema award.
Moderated by North Carolina School of the Arts instructor Dale Pollock, this event will be held in the Stevens Center (405 W. 4th St.).
It didn't hurt any that she showed copious amounts of flawless skin, not to mention a toned and voluptuous body. But her face convinced you that while she could be seductive and indicing, she could also be tough and kick the badass out of the bad guys.
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