Full Frame 2024: Part Two

My second day at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in downtown Durham was my busiest day of watching films on the big screen in a long while. And the whole day was spent in Fletcher Hall, the main stage at the Carolina Theater, with its 1,048 seats and two balconies. 

Saturday morning, I attended the Remembering Nancy Buirski event, in which a host of the Full Frame founders colleague friends, including Co-Festival Director Sadie Tillery, filmmakers Yance Ford, Chris Hegedus, and Sam Pollard; Center for Documentary Studies Director Tom Rankin, and Buirski’s sister, Judy Cohen, gave really touching, really emotional testimonies to the recently passed Full Frame founder and filmmaker.

POWER (Dir. Yance Ford, 2024)

Ford’s follow-up to his excellent Oscar nominated doc, STRONG ISLAND (which I called “one of the strongest documentary documentary debuts I’ve ever seen,” when it screened at Full Frame 2017), is a fascinating thesis on the history of policing in America. In a thorough effort to find the roots and cause of where we are now, Ford calls upon writers, scholars, and most dominatingly, Minneapolis Police Inspector Charles Adams, to put into perspective the issues that result in extreme brutality through the dawn of the first forces to the modern day tragedies of Rodney King and George Floyd. This compelling, and often disturbing, doc will premiere on Netflix later this year.

UNION (Dirs. Stephen Maing & Brett Story, 2024)

“We want to thank Jeff Bezos for going to space because while he was up there we were signing people up.” - Chris Smalls, President of the Amazon Labor Union

The struggle of current and former Amazon employees in Staten Island fighting for their rights against Jeff Bezos’ mega corporation is captured with grit in this scrappy yet vivid doc. The story is largely headed by the strong-minded Chris Smalls, who was fired for protesting work conditions from the company’s New York warehouse in 2020, and founded the ALU. We follow Smalls as he mans a stand across from the ginormous fulfillment center (shot so ominously it comes off like the Watergate in ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN), and urges passing workers to unionize. The friction between Smalls, and his colleagues is palpable at moments, but the sense of community is undeniable especially when times get tight. UNION is a crowd pleaser of a impactful doc that should be sought out when it, with hope, opens wide after its run on the festival circuit. 

ENO (Dir. Gary Hustwit, 2024)

At past Full Frames, Saturday night was often when a music documentary, or rockumentary, was given the spotlight with previous years featuring such illuminairies as Arcade Fire, the Avett Brothers, Nick Cave, the Magnetic Fields, the National, and Pussy Riot, so I was elated to see that this year’s subject is one of my favorite figures in modern music: Brian Eno. 

Though he’s more known as a producer (U2, Peter Gabriel, Talking Heads, Devo, lovers of art rock well know his performing chops as shown here in rare live footage of his tenure in Roxy Music, and in the studio working on his seminal ambient solo work (one of his early albums is actually called Ambient 1: Music for Airports).

Thing is, this experimental film, billed as “the world’s first generative cinematic documentary,” is presented from a code via custom made software that determines different routes in which to assemble the scenes so it’s different every time. In a Q & A following the screening, director Hustwit said that the version that was shown at Sundance had a lot more Laurie Anderson cues in it. So it’s kind of a Choose Your Own Adventure-style kind of doc presentation. That’s fine and all, but I just want to know if there’s a version that has more Devo.

As a fan, I’d like to see multiple takes on this material, so I’m sure I'll be revisiting this in the future. Hustwit’s ENO gives hope that more music-themed docs will attempt anti-Wikipedia-type run downs of careers, and mix it up a bit. But even without the flashy packaging, Mr. Eno is more than enough of an engaging artist to spend time with, and this doc is at its best when it cools it with the code, and just hangs with him.

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Full Frame 2024: Part One

After years of being a virtual only event, the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival returned to the Carolina Theater, and Convention Center in downtown Durham, N.C. this last weekend. Despite not being as robustly attended as in the pre-pandemic days, there was a healthy roster of films with 50 titles including 35 features and 15 short films from 22 countries, and a lot of familiar faces piling in to take in the four day run of primo infotainment.

The shadows of Full Frame founder Nancy Buirski, and documentary filmmaker god D.A. Pennebaker, who both passed since the last in-person Full Frame in 2019, loomed large over this year’s recovened proceedings, and were lovingly celebrated this festival with screenings of their work, and tribute panels featuring remembrances from colleagues.

Having missed the first day of Full Frame 2024, I kicked off my Friday at the fest with Buirski's final film:

DESPERATE SOULS, THE DARK CITY, AND THE LEGEND OF MIDNIGHT COWBOY 

(Dir. Nancy Buirski, 2022)

Nobody who’s ever seen John Schlesinger’s 1969 classic, MIDNIGHT COWBOY, the gritty X-rated counterculture drama that won the Best Picture Oscar in 1970, will ever forget it. I say that because it's been decades since I've seen it on VHS, but its scuzzy depiction of the friendship between two hustlers, Jon Voight’s Texan rube, Joe Buck, and Dustin Hoffman’s sleazy schemer “Ratso” Rizzo is permanently burned into by brain.

Inspired by Glenn Frankel’s 2021 book, Shooting Midnight Cowboy: Art, Sex, Loneliness, Liberation, and the Making of a Dark Classic, Buirski examines the complicated feelings, and tumultuous times behind the amorously questionable adaptation of James Leo Herlihy’s 1965 novel, and offers a lot of tasty context to take in, especially in its exploration of the gay cowboy motif, which, of course, leads to BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN comparisons (and use of clips).

Voight appears in tight close-up to give his side of the story, happily with no right-wing nuttiness, while co-star Hoffman appears only in archival interviews, alongside insights provided by actors Bob Balaban (whose first film this was), Brenda Vaccaro, Jennifer Salt (daughter of screenwriter Waldo Salt); and critics Charles Kaiser, J. Hoberman, and Lucy Sante.

Buirski’s superb film effectively breaks down of Schelisher’s unforgettable film in thought provoking moment after moment, leaving one to reevaluate MIDNIGHT COWBOY’S place in film history, queer cinema, and pop culture overall. Having seen several other of the Pulitzer Prize winning woman's other films having gotten spotlights at previous Full Frames like THE LOVING STORY, BY SIDNEY LUMET, and THE RAPE OF RECY TAYLOR, with her in attendance, and participating in Q & As afterwards, it was quite moving to take in her latest, but extremely sad to not have her there at the end this time to discuss it.

Next up, I finished off my Friday night with a ragged rock doc:

A POEM IS A NAKED PERSON (Dir. Les Blank, 1974)

Going in, I was expecting to learn something about the life of legendary Tulsa musician Leon Russell, but this curious, ramshackle doc that was shot 50 years ago, but shelved until 2015, doesn’t aim to educate - just entertain. The film is split between weird, quirky footage from over a three-year period (‘72-‘74) filmed at Russell’s studio on Grand Lake in Oklahoma, and rowdy concert sequences that show Russell at the top of his game mesmerizing packed audiences.

There are also fascinating time capsule-worthy appearances by George Jones, Willie Nelson, and the lesser-known singer-songwriter Eric Anderson, who seems to clash a bit with Russell in the studio. So I didn't learn anything about Russell’s background, catalogue, or what makes him tick, but I did learn that he was a glorious crowd-pleasing showman with a killer voice, and grand piano chops. And despite this relic’s disjointed, dated approach, that was all I needed.

Stay tuned for Part Two for more Full Frame 2024 coverage.

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