April is my birthday month, so it's fitting that it's also the birthday month of this blog. Yes, soon little SIM will be one year old and I will at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival to celebrate. For it was there that this blog came into existence. It's a rather weird story, but it was born out of necessity, we'll just leave it at that. But I did have the guys from Nomadak Tx (one of my favorite films of '07) sing happy birthday to me at the closing night party, so that was muy especial. Maybe I can get Werner Herzog or Phil Donahue to serenade me this year.
On April 3 - 6, downtown Durham, North Carolina will be the spot of the 11th iteration of this intimate, and important, festival and they just announced 15 docs that will screen in a special programming strand that will bring the likes of people like Donahue and Elvis Mitchell to town.
The opening night film will be the US premiere of Trumbo by director Peter Askin based on the play Trumbo's son, Christopher, (both pictured above) wrote about this blacklisted screenwriter of Spartacus and Roman Holiday.
A Center Frame screening will be Black List by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, one of my favorite portrait photographers. In this film, Elvis Mitchell conducts interviews with 20 prominent African Americans like comedian Chris Rock, writer and national treasure, Toni Morrison and the Rev. Al Sharpton, among others. The other Center Frame piece is Donahue and Ellen Spiro's Body of War. I haven't had a chance yet to catch this so am looking forward to seeing it there.
A lot of the films in this curated strand have played festivals and theaters throughout the past year. There are also brand-new pieces like Nanette Burstein's award-winning, critically popular, American Teen (fresh from Sundance and True/False), and Lucia Small and Ed Pincus' Axe in the Attic (Lucia is in Paris with the film right now at the 30-year-old Cinema du Reel, one of the premiere international doc fests). I saw this film at its debut at the New York Film Festival this past fall and was mighty impressed with their contribution to the Katrina archive. There will also be a special free student screening of Lucy Walker's wonderful and brave Blindsight on Thursday morning (opening day), currently playing here in New York at the IFC Center. Ed Pincus will also be bringing his Diaries (1971-1976) and Herzog brings his Encounters at the End of the World (an IDFA fave).
I'm really looking forward to seeing Irina Salina's Flow: For Love of Water, Helen Trestikova's Marcela, and Peter Raymont's A Promise to the Dead: The Exile Journey of Ariel Dorfman, among others.
Throw in a couple of stellar sneak peeks and a slate of special guests, plus the wonderful low-key parties at local downtown venues and you've got yourself a pretty fine time down there in Raleigh-Durham. I remember being struck at how amazing it was to see pretty much every documentary superstar there is in one small spot. I'm also told by the press office that they now have a new press lounge with wireless (!) so I'll be blogging daily from there easily and effortlessly--well, easily.
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