Full Frame Documentary Film Festival

Full Frame Documentary Film Festival presented by the Center for Documentary Studies, will screen a selection of international documentary films in Durham and Chapel Hill from April 14-17. This year’s Festival features premieres of more than 60 documentaries and a thematic program on archival footage curated by filmmaker Rick Prelinger. Recess Film Editor Andrew O’Rourke discusses his top choices from the weekend’s festival.

POLITICAL

Both 2011 Sundance Official Selections, polemical domestic films Hot Coffee and How to Die in Oregon explore two hot-button issues: the frivolity of the American legal system and the right to euthanasia in Oregon. Hot Coffee explores the outcome of the infamous lawsuit against McDonald’s that netted Stella Liebeck millions of dollars for spilling hot coffee on her lap. Furthermore, it digs into the media’s role in the case and how leaders have used it to distort the public’s view of malpractice reform. How to Die in Oregon—winner of Sundance’s Grand Jury Award—follows a mother diagnosed with terminal cancer on her path towards her self-selected death date, showing her energetic run to the finish line of life as she works through her bucket list. A story of xenophobia and farmworkers in Finland, How to Pick Berries will resonate with U.S. audiences who have similar perceptions of the nation’s Mexican-based agricultural labor force. In Finland, Thai immigrants have been hired by a large food production firm to grow and harvest Finland’s most culture-steeped produce: cloudberries. Bobby Fischer Against the World follows the life of the world chess champion as his life dissolved into psychological chaos during the Cold War. After winning the championship in 1972, he withdrew from the public sphere, only to emerge 20 years later for a match that landed him in prison and eventually pushed him to exile.

QUIRKY

This year’s Full Frame lineup features several mystery documentaries, including Scenes of a Crime and Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles. The former takes audiences through a pseudo-crime investigation, mostly focusing on footage of the controversial ten-hour-long police interrogation of a man who allegedly killed his four-month-old son. The grueling interrogation eventually resulted in the father’s signing of a confession, but new evidence later surfaced that cast doubts upon the results of the process. Resurrect Dead maintains a lighter tone, investigating the whodunit mystery of tiles that have appeared on sidewalks and streets around the world reading, “Toynbee Idea/ In Kubrik’s movie 2011/ Resurrect Dead/ On Planet Jupiter.” Will the culprits be caught? You’ll have to watch to find out. I Will Marry the Whole Village is a rare entry in the genre of musical documentary. And by musical documentary, I mean the film itself—the story of a Serbian accordion player who tasks himself with marrying off the village’s surplus of single men—is actually a musical. He conceives a project in which the men of the village make video portraits of themselves to woo the elusive womenfolk. Sticking with the lighthearted films, Being Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey follows the life of Kevin Clash, the man behind the energetic red puppet featured on Sesame Street. The doc features rare behind-the-scenes footage of both Sesame Street and the Jim Henson Workshop.

Directed by Durham resident Rodrigo Dorfman, One Night in Kernersville is a 20-minute portrait of jazz bassist John Brown, director of the Duke Jazz Program and an associate professor of the practice of music. One Night delves into the heart and deep emotions required for recording an album. The Loving Story—which is also a featured pick by Full Frame—tells the tale of a young couple exiled from the state of Virginia in 1958 for their interracial marriage. A court battle ensued and resulted in the nullification of all anti-miscegenation laws in the country. Steve Milligan, a local filmmaker and Arts of the Moving Image production teaching fellow, is a cinematographer of the film.

ENVIRONMENTAL

This year’s Full Frame selection is rife with environmental films. If A Tree Falls tells the story of the Earth Liberation Front, a domestic eco-terrorist organization responsible for millions of dollars in property destruction. It follows the story of Daniel McGowan, who is serving seven years in prison, and the path that led him to radical action. A story of more muted conflict, The Pipe details the struggle of a small Irish village to block oil giant Shell from constructing a gas pipeline that threatens to divide their community and ruin the landscape. Windfall puts an interesting twist on traditional community-corporation environmental disputes, as an eco-friendly wind farm causing problems in a rural New York community. The low-frequency whirs of the turbines have led to health problems in the local population, and the massive towers are ultra-visible scars on the landscape that have polarized debate in the town.