The prodigal son returns.
The Full Frame Documentary Film Festival—often lauded as one of the premier documentary festivals—has joined with Duke’s Center for Documentary Studies. The merger is a welcome-home for Full Frame, which was originally created by CDS as the DoubleTake Film Festival in 1998. The festival started operating independently of CDS in 2003.
Although the CDS will become Full Frame’s institutional home, the offices, staff and budget of the festival will remain unchanged, said Full Frame Executive Director Deirdre Haj.
“Duke and Full Frame’s Board of Directors have made a very conscious effort to maintain the artistic integrity of the festival,” she said.
Full Frame—held every April in downtown Durham—screens about 100 jury-selected documentaries, accompanied by discussion panels with filmmakers. The festival will run from April 14 to 17 next year, and organizers expect to select from over 1,200 documentary submissions.
Unlike the University’s academic departments, CDS has a unique position as an independent non-profit that employs Duke professors, CDS Director Tom Rankin said. Its funding comes from both Duke and outside sources, allowing for greater freedom in programming decisions, he added. Full Frame will retain its non-profit status as it rejoins CDS.
“[The merger] doesn’t diminish [CDS’] need to be very entrepreneurial in terms of funding and partnership for it to grow,” Rankin said.
Duke will continue to contribute $150,000 per year to Full Frame for the next two years—a pledge the University made in 2007 before the merger.
Haj emphasized that this association with Duke lends long-term stability to Full Frame, which depends heavily on sponsorship. The rest of the festival’s $900,000 budget is expected to be covered by private donors, Rankin said.
Seen as a crossroads of documentary expression, Durham’s profile in the film world will increase as Full Frame merges with CDS—the largest center of its kind in the nation, Rankin said. The merger will help create a “documentary community” at Duke and in Durham, which Rankin hopes will attract more talented students and faculty in the arts.
Haj said the merger illustrates the increasing relevance of the documentary form.
“In a world where the media is created by five corporations, film festivals are one of the last bastions of free speech,” she said. “Documentaries take us to a place where CNN cannot.”
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.