Faces at the Full Frame Festival ‘09

Photos of the Full Frame Festival ‘09

Future Funding for Full Frame Film Festival

It was probably no coincidence that the Duke Chronicle ran a story on April 3, Day Two of the 2009 Full Frame Festival, detailing budget cuts by Durham County and Durham City that will impact two major arts organizations that bring millions of dollars in revenue to the local economy (the American Dance Festival and the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival). These are  environmentally low-impact events that leave the community better than they found it.

If Durham moves in this direction, it would be incredibly short-sighted. As a long-time Durham County resident, I have to believe there are better places to cut. These two events put Durham in the limelight each year. Let’s face it, this is a community that usually can’t buy positive PR! Try to get even the Raleigh media to say something nice about Durham – not to mention national and international media. But with ADF and Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, the reviews are glowing and far reaching.

According to the article in the Chronicle:

“Current non-city agencies will have an overall 3 to 10 percent decrease in funding, according to guidelines outlined by Bonfield. Non-city agencies that will be affected in the new fiscal year include the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival and the American Dance Festival.” (Source: Duke Chronicle, April 3, 2009)

To check out the article by Carmen Hernandez online, click on this link. And take a moment to let Durham know how much you appreciate its past funding of the arts, including the new Durham Performing Arts Center.

Full Frame Festival Photos on Flickr

If you’d like to get a better look at the 2009 Full Frame Festival, there’s a Flickr site with a number of photos from the event. You can link to it by clicking here. Or you can go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/arsepoetica/tags/fullframe09/. I’ll look around to find other sources of photography from this year’s festival. I know that there are now photo archives of this year’s festival on the Full Frame website at www.fullframefest.org.

Full Frame Coverage Continues – Blogs and Press

Here are links to some of the more recent blog and press coverage of the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival to find its way to my inbox:

The Film Talk Blog – Full Frame Day 2: Roundup – Click here to access their story.

The Way We Get By Blog (http://thewaywegetbyfilm.blogspot.com) – “TWWGB at Full Frame Film Festival” - www.thewaywegetbymovie.com – Here’s a brief excerpt from their post from Full Frame:

“We screened at the largest venue with our 35mm film print at the Full Frame Film Festival. The venue, Carolina Theater– Fletcher Hall, was absolutely beautiful and the film looked great on the big screen. For a 10:30am Friday screening we had a great crowd and the audience was really into the film. After our screening, we spoke to a group of volunteers for the festival who came in to see the film and they were very emotional afterwards. I told them–hey, you guys don’t know what it means to see people connecting in such intimate ways with our film. This is such an amazing feeling for us as filmmakers!”

Click here to access a copy of the filmmakers’ interview with WUNC Radio (NPR).

Badgerblog – The folks at the Badgerblog have a nice recap of their Day Two at Full Frame. You can check out their post by visiting http://badger.livejournal.com/1486605.html.

Random Chatter – Movie, TV, Entertainment and Media Podcasts – Listen to their Full Frame Digest Part One by clicking on this link. Or visit http://www.randomchatter.com/2009/04/mc-44/.

Film Babble Blog – “Full Frame Documentary Film Fest: Day Three” – Click here to visit their recap of Day Three at the Festival. http://filmbabble.blogspot.com/2009/04/full-frame-documentary-film-fest-2009_05.html

The Opinionated Judge – “POSTCARD #3 FROM FULL FRAME 2009″ – This is Darleen Ortega’s third post from the Festival. Check it out by clicking here. (http://opinionatedjudge.blogspot.com)

The News & Observer - “Full Frame crowds swell: Third day brings greatest interest” by Craig Lindsey – Here’s an excerpt from Craig’s story:

“Judging by the line of people that stretched from outside the Carolina Theatre around the corner to the Marriott hotel entrance late yesterday afternoon, Full Frame’s movies were attracting everyone and then some.

As usual, attendance for the documentary film fest was larger on its third day. And, as usual, many events attracted people to the festival in droves.

Saturday’s main event was a sold-out evening screening of “The September Issue,” a look at how fashion/media icon Anna Wintour and the men and women of Vogue magazine put together its most popular issue of the year. Editor-at-large (and Durham native) Andre Leon Talley attended the screening, along with director R.J. Cutler and Vogue creative director Grace Coddington.” (Source: News & Observer, April 5, 2009)

You can visit Craig’s story by going to http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/1472516.html.

Herald-Sun (Durham) – Finally, Cliff Bellamy of the Herald-Sun has a story in today’s paper titled “‘Hoop Dreams’ filmmakers, subject reunite.” To visit Cliff’s detailed story about Steve James and Hoop Dreams, click on this link. Cliff and Dawn from the Herald-Sun have done a remarkable job covering the Festival. Here’s a brief excerpt from Cliff’s story:

“James said he had no idea how deeply the film would examine the lives of both students and their families. “It profoundly changed us an the way we looked at the world,” James said. “By spending all those years with them, they became flesh and blood,” not just symbols, he added” (Source: Herald-Sun, Spril 5, 2009)

The Scoop on Full Frame: Day Two Coverage

Once again, there were plenty of journalists and bloggers following the full Frame Documentary Film Festival yesterday (Friday). It was a beautiful sunny day in Durham and Festival goers seemed to revel in the light. The plaza area was bustling and the cinemas were packed! Festival goers also seemed to revel in the dark.

Here’s a summary of some of the press coverage, along with links so you can read further:

Herald-Sun (Durham, NC) – I have to start with the Herald-Sun. Yesterday I had an opportunity to chat with Dawn Baumgartner Vaughan, one of the Herald-Sun’s two reporters covering the Festival. Dawn is doing a tremendous job covering this massive event, a job that could prove cumbersome for many reporters. There’s simply a lot here to cover – and much of it is difficult to put into words. How do you explain a phenomenon like Wavy Gravy? In her article this morning titled “Hippie legend Wavy Gravy documents his own journey,” Dawn gives readers a quick introduction to a man with a very long history. Several times during the interview with Dawn, Wavy Gravy broke into song and poetry. It was fascinating to watch. Here’s a piece of her story: (http://heraldsun.southernheadlines.com/durham/4-1135401.cfm)

“It is hard to be grumpy around someone with the good vibes of Wavy Gravy, the hippie clown, 1960s counterculture figure and namesake of a Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavor.

He is spreading peace and laughter in Durham this weekend at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival downtown.” (Source: Herald-Sun, April 4, 2009)

The News & Observer – “Art has a scent at Full Frame” by Craig Lindsey – This is a very strange story. Of all the thing to write about, Craig is obsessing about a smell in the air – something he has sensed (patchouli). To tell the truth, I’ve been here 12 hours a day for the last two days and haven’t smelled anything out of the ordinary. Here’s an excerpt from his story in the News & Observer (Raleigh) this morning:

“It seems that several people, including employees at Full Frame home base Carolina Theatre, a festival selection committee member and members of the press, have commented on the overwhelming scent that has been emanating from someone (or something) at the 12th annual documentary festival. At the opening-night party Thursday, Full Frame executive director Peg Palmer had her own possible explanation about the intrusive smell: “Well, Wavy Gravy is here.”" (Source: News & Observer, April 4, 2009)

With so much to write about at Full Frame, I am fascinated that Craig chose the scent of patchouli as his lead for his feature (http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/1471140.html) in Saturday’s paper. What Craig does extremely well in his story is give the reader a sense of the Festival, its spirit, and the impressions of the filmmakers in attendance. At a time when the economy has many of us in a tailspin, Full Frame continues on – and documentary film still has a remarkable home in historic downtown Durham, NC.

“Italian filmmaker Raffaele Brunetti, whose “Hair India” documentary that he co-directed made its North American debut at Full Frame on Thursday, is impressed with the whole environment.

“The festival is very good,” said Brunetti. “It’s very high-level, but you can still feel a simple and warm atmosphere. And you have a real variety of viewers. You have from very simple people or elderly people living in this town, from filmmakers to industry people. I like very much this mixture.”" (Source: News & Observer, April 4, 2009)

The Film Talk – If you’d like to hear Friday’s podcast from the guys at The Film Talk, click here. They will be doing podcasts each day from the 2009 Full Frame Festival. You can also check out their most recent blog post recapping Day Two of the Festival – http://www.thefilmtalk.com/. In this post they discuss “Saint Misbehavin’: The Wavy Gravy Movie.”

The Film Babble Blog – “Full Frame Documentary Film Fest 2009: Day Two” – This post gives a quick review of Day Two at the Festival: “The sky cleared and the sun came out for the 2nd day of the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in downtown Durham. Bigger crowds came out too as it was Friday and more folks were free for the weekend.” (http://filmbabble.blogspot.com)

Siegfried’s Crack Hour (blog) – Matt Gronke, a blogger from Raleigh, NC, is posting daily from the Festival. Matt is a graduate of NC State University and is working hard to get into the film biz. Check out his most recent Full Frame posts at http://crackhour.blogspot.com/.

Opinionated Judge (blog) – Darleen Ortega has put up her second post of the Festival on her Opiniated Judge blog. And yes, she is a real judge on the Oregon Court of Appeals. In her “Postcard #2 from Full Frame 2009″ she rates (rather than review) a number of the films she was able to view in Friday. They include: The Way We Get By, Ma Bar, The Kinda Sutra, and Saint Misbehavin’: The Wavy Gravy Movie – a film she calls “the best film of the festival so far.” Check out her post at http://opinionatedjudge.blogspot.com/2009/04/postcard-2-from-full-frame-2009-i-saw.html. Here’s a bit from her post that captures the way the Wavy Gravy Movie impacted her:

“I am telling you, it may sound goofy, but it is absolutely inspiring stuff, revealing that, for some at least, the hippie movement consisted of a lot more than drugs and free love, but also a brand of devotion that some people have actually lived out in the years since. Wavy Gravy, who eventually adopted a clown persona partly because he frequently entertains children but also because dressing as a clown (or as Santa or the Easter Bunny) seemed to finally deter police beatings that gravely exacerbated his serious long-standing back problems), is the perfect modern-day example of a sacred fool. As his best friend of many years describes it, when you meet a clown who thinks more deeply than you do and has read more than you have, it throws you, and Wavy Gravy uses the spaces his playful humor opens up to heal and inspire.” (Source: Opinionated Judge Blog)

Wavy Gravy, The ‘Clownglomerate’ Saint

I admit upfront that I am a huge Wavy Gravy fan. After today, I’m tempted to become a Wavy Gravy groupie. Michelle Esrick directed “Saint Misbehavin’,” the film that tells part of the Wavy Gravy Story. (DA Pennebaker was the executive producer on the film.) Wavy and Michelle visited us today in the Full Frame Press Lounge and I had the opportunity to film them while they were being interviewed by Dawn Baumgartner Vaughan of the Herald-Sun. After the interview I got to hang out with Wavy and Michelle, and listen to more of Wavy’s stories. He was extremely gracious and generous with his time. For me, meeting Wavy Gravy was one of the true highlights of the 2009 Full Frame Festival! This guy has more positive energy than anyone I’ve ever met. As far as I’m concerned, Wavy Gravy is as relevant today as he was in the 60’s, in large part because he has chosen to remain relevant through his good works. (Watch the video clip below!)

Here’s an excerpt from Mr. Gravy’s bio on his website:

“Wavy Gravy, Hugh Romney, who is fast approaching official geezerhood, is more active and more effective in the world then he was decades ago. Back then when still known as Hugh Romney he stood on the stage of the original Woodstock concert and announced….” What we have in mind is breakfast in bed for 400,000!” He was at Woodstock as a member of an entertainment/activist commune known as the Hog Farm. Today, the Hog Farm still exists, collectively owning and operating the 700-acre Black Oak Ranch and hosting the annual Pig-Nic. And Wavy lives a third of the year in a Berkeley Hog Farm urban outpost, a big communal house he refers to as “hippie Hyannisport” But Mr. Gravy (as he’s known to readers of the New York Times) has expanded his activities over the past two-and-a-half decades to include codirectorship (with his wife, Jahanara) of Camp Winnarainbow, a performing arts program for children which takes over the Hog Farm for 10 weeks every summer, and the organization of all-star rock concerts to raise money for a variety of environmental, progressive, political, and charitable causes, most notably Seva, a foundation he cofounded in 1978, initially to combat preventable and curable blindness in the Third World.”

Check out Wavy Gravy’s website at www.wavygravy.net. For more about Michelle’s film, go to www.rippleeffectfilms.com. Here’s the video footage I shot today during Wavy’s interview:

Quick Interview with Sadie Tillery of Full Frame

Below is the video of my quick interview this morning with Sadie Tillery, the director of programming for the 2009 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. She shares with us her impressions of the Festival on the morning of Day 2.

Full Frame Festival in the Media: Day Two

Here are a few of the folks and media outlets talking and sharing reflections about the 2009 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. These are the latest media and blog hits (thanks to Google Alerts!):

The Brooklyn Socialite Blog – The blogger has a great post about her first day at the Festival. In this post, she shares her thoughts about Wounded Knee. Check out the post at http://thebrooklynsocialite.wordpress.com/2009/04/02/the-southbrooklyn-socialite-takes-full-frame-wounded-knee/.

Random Chatter Blog – Andrew of  Random Chatter is covering the Full Frame Festival for the blog. His first post, titled “5 Reasons to Tune In This Weekend,” gives  5 reasons not only to tune into our Full Frame coverage this weekend, but to give documentaries in general a chance. Check out the post at http://www.randomchatter.com/2009/04/5-reason-to-tune-in-this-weekend/. And tune in to Random Chatter all weekend for Andrew’s posts and podcasts from the Festival. (www.randomchatter.com) Here’s an excerpt from his most recent post:

“Here’s how it will work. My brother James and I will be covering the festival on behalf of MovieChatter. Between us, we’re currently scheduled to see more than 20 films. Some of them are feature-length, others of them are shorter. Whenever we have time between screenings, we plan on recording brief reviews of what we’ve seen. These reviews will be fairly short, and will not contain spoilers. That way you can hear us give our general impressions and figure out whether or not these are films you might potentially want to see once they’re released, without having them spoiled for you.

Whenever there’s time, I will upload each of these reviews to the website. They will not go into the iTunes feed. So if you want the most up-to-date coverage from the festival, you’ll want to keep checking back here, or follow us on Twitter to receive an automatic notice of when a new review is posted.”

NBC-17 New Story – “Despite Rain And Recession, Some Drive Hundreds Of Miles For ‘Full Frame’” – Click here to see first day coverage from Josh Green of NBC-17 (based in Raleigh, North Carolina).

Dawn Baumgartner Vaughan of The Herald-Sun (Durham, NC) has an article in this morning’s paper titled “‘Beauty in reality’ at Full Frame Documentary Film Festival.” In her story, Dawn reviews ‘Shooting Beauty’ – one of the fims screened on Day one of this week’s Festival. Here’s just a small piece from Dawn’s story:

Bent attended Full Frame about five years ago when her “Divining Mom” film was shown. They had a great time then as well, she said. “We love this festival. They completely take care of filmmakers, and it is in a community who have the same passion for documenting truth,” she said. “There’s beauty in reality and smaller stories about life.”

The Film Talk Blog (www.thefilmtalk.com) – In their most recent post about the 2009 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival , Jett Loe reviews ‘Mechanical Love’ – a film directed by Phie Ambo. Here’s an excerpt:

“I say astounding not for the qualities of the documentary itself, (which is well shot and cut, through could benefit from some trimming – it’s an hour long film that feels padded at seventy-nine minutes), but for the subject matter.  This is the world of A.I. and Blade Runner come to life.”

Opinionated Judge Blog - Darleen Ortega is a judge on the Oregon Court of Appeals and a self-appointed film expert. On her blog, she has set up a well-defined system that she uses for rating films. A little scary! In her “Postcard #1 From Full Frame 2009,” she reviews ‘Mechanical Love’ and gave it a ‘7′ which means a very good film by her standards. She then goes on to review and rate ‘Art and Copy,’  ‘We Live in Public,’ and ‘Rough Aunties.’ Darleen’s blog can be found at http://opinionatedjudge.blogspot.com.

Triangle Music Blog – http://trianglemusic.blogspot.com – Triangle Music blog’s April 2, 2009 post draws attention to Arcade Fire’s documentary Miroir Noir which was released as a digital download in December and is now preparing for screening at Full Frame on Saturday, April 4. You can check out the post and the Triangle Music blog by clicking here.

That’s it for now. Lots happening! Stay tuned.

All These Wonderful Things blog: Full Frame 2009

A.J. Schnack’s Blog, All These Wonderful Things, has a nice piece today on the 2009 Full Frame Festival.  Click here to visit the blog.