Full Frame 2019: Day One

It’s that time of year again. That’s right, once again it’s time for The Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, four days of non-fiction fun in Durham, N.C., at the Carolina Theatre and the Durham Convention Center. Now, since I’ve been covering Full Frame for Film Babble Blog for over a decade, I feel like I’ve said it all before in these intros to my mini-reviews of the docs I saw daily. Like, for instance, using phrases like “non-fiction fun,” or mentions of the weather – it was nice today, not that that mattered to the hundreds of people watching films indoors – and, of course, the use of pictures just like that one above.

So let’s get right to the helpings of primo infotainment (yes, I’ve used that phrase before too) that I indulged in on Day One: 

First up, North Carolina-based, first-time filmmaker Jethro Waters’ F/11 AND BE THERE, which is one of those docs whose subject, in this case photojournalist Burk Uzzle (a Raleigh native!), is someone I didn’t think I knew anything about, but while watching it I realize that I’m well familiar with the man’s work.

You see, Uzzle shot the iconic image of the blanket-clad hippy couple which graced the cover of the soundtrack album for the Woodstock film in 1969, his photo coverage of Martin Luther King’s funeral contains many recognizable photos, and many of his pictures depicting Cambodian war refugees in the late ‘70s that I’ve seen in many a magazine over the years.

Tons of Uzzle’s eye-popping pictures, beautifully augment his life tales, with animations by Cable Hardin filling in the spaces in his stories in which there are no photos or footage of, like a great, gripping anecdote about covering a KKK rally. Almost as gorgeous as Uzzle's photography is Water's cinematography which crisply captures his subject at work, whether in his studio or out on the road. F11 AND BE THERE (a camera setting, and a quote about being at the right place at the right time) is striking biodoc that will likely give folks insights into many famous pictures that they’ve seen before, but never thought about who or what was behind them. 

Next up. Bill Haney’s JIM ALLISON: BREAKTHROUGH, another biodoc of a great guy behind the scenes. That would be Noble prize-winning immunologist Texan Jim Allison, who with his long grey hair and scraggly beard is a Jerry Garcia-ish looking scientist. Since his mother died from lymphoma, and his brother from prostate cancer, Dr. Allison has long been obsessed with curing cancer, and this film shows him getting damn close. But his struggles with getting funding from pharmaceutical companies get in the way.

In this informative film which is narrated by Woody Harrelson, we also see another side of Dr. Allison as a blues-loving harmonica player who makes friends with Willie Nelson, and even plays with him at the Austin City Limits Festival in 2016. But mostly we learn, via dark animation, about the T cell receptor, which fights cancer cells, and other infected cells, in order to help the body to fight these diseases. Dr. Allison is an inspiring figure, and now he’s got an inspiring film portrait to boot. 

The next doc, Heddy Honigmann’s BUDDY, is less heavy than the previous film yet it deals with some emotional material. It concerns the world of service dogs – you know, dogs that are trained to help people with disabilities – and follows six different individuals who have been paired with smart, capable canines that they repeatedly say that they can’t live without.

So the cast is made up of Mister and his human Trevor, an Afghanistan veteran, who Mister helps get through flashbacks; Makker and his human, Edith, whose blindness is aided immensely by Makker; Utah, and his human, the young autistic Zeb, who plays with Utah from behind a comforter; Missy and her also blind human Hans, who loves Missy more than anybody he knows; Kay and her human Annebel, who are inseparable; and Kaiko, and her wheelchair-bound human, Erna, who we watch in awe as Kaiko pulls off her socks by command.

BUDDY may be a bit formless, and disjointed, but it’s such a touching crowd pleaser that folks will look right past that, and into the eyes of these talented and devoted guide dogs. There are too many amusing, and touching scenes to pick a favorite but the one that shows one of the dogs retrieving a piece of paper from a printer, and taking it, by mouth, of course, to their respective human is definitely up there.

More later...

Full Frame 2017: Days Three & Four

This was my ninth year covering the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival for Film Babble Blog. I had attended various films before at the event, but my four day coverage became a thing in 2009. Now, I only saw a smidgen of the 90 films shown from last Thursday morning to Sunday night's last screening, mine is, of course, a pretty limited perspective. There were a number of films I missed that I heard great buzz about, like the Frank Stiefel’s short HEAVEN IS A TRAFFIC JAM ON THE 405, which won a few Full Frame Awards, but I’ll catch up with those later. Here’s what I saw on Saturday and Saunday:

WIELKI TEATR (aka THE GREAT THEATER)

(Dir. Sławomir Batyra, 2016)

This 30-minute short joins STILL TOMORROW and LONG STRANGE TRIP in having an excellent sound design. Whether it’s the echoes through the rafters, or the clamor of the orchestra practicing, or the bustle of assemblers, upholsterers, and prop masters getting the sets for in place, everything audibly pops in Sławomir Batyra’s backstage breakdown of the rehearsals for Mariusz Trelinski’s production of Giacomo Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” at The Grand Theater (Polish name: Wielki Teatr) in Warsaw. 

There is no voice-over narrator, no interview sound bites, just a series of shots of people doing their jobs in seemingly every nook and cranny of the largest opera theatre in the world with only random voices giving instructions like “Fishermen, to the boats please.” Made up of a number of visually pleasurable shots that match its immersive sound, Batyra film is a wonderfully artful tour of a magnificent venue. 

Post note: THE GREAT THEATER got an honorable mention in the Full Frame Jury Award for Best Short category.

ONE OCTOBER (Dir. Rachel Shuman, 2017) “New York is never the same city for more than a dozen years altogether,” a quote credited to Harper’s Monthly from 1856 starts off this film shot in New York City during October 2008, in the weeks leading up to the historic election of Barack Obama. The film follows WFMU radio host Clay Pigeon around as he interviews random people on the streets, capturing the flavor of that memorable season when the world economy faced its most dangerous crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Cinematographer David Sampliner’s camera also captures the Big Apple beautifully in vivid shots, whether of protesters, parades, street musicians, or bird watchers in Central Park, that are interspersed throughout the film. This is enhanced by Paul Brill’s lively score performed by cellist Dave Eggar.

But it’s the people that Pigeon (real name Kacy Ross) talks to that will be the film’s biggest takeaway, like the old coot who says, “listen, the white guys have been in charge for so long, give the black guys a chance, they can’t do worse than we did,” or the young mother who complains about the gentrification of Harlem, “five more years I won’t even be living here, this won’t look like this no more.” The one hour and seven minute ONE OCTOBER is a fine time capsule as is, but I could’ve gone for some more New Yorker straight talk. 

BRONX GOTHIC (Dir. Andrew Rossi, 2017) I had never heard of dancer, writer, and choreographer Okwui Okpokwasili before, but I know I’ll never forget her after this powerful doc about the performance artist’s acclaimed solo show “Bronx Gothic.” 

Rossi (PAGE ONE: INSIDE THE NEW YORK TIMES) films Okpokwasili as she takes her show on tour to small theaters in Milwaukee, Chicago, and Atlanta. Alongside the ample samplings from the show, which depicts the dialogue between two 11-year-old black girls growing up in the Bronx, we also get a glimpse of her life offstage, and with her family. The audience reaction shots are priceless as the performer’s material, demeanor, and especially her chaotic, seizure-like dancing obviously pushes many buttons. 

Okpokwasili, who calls her work “memories from a rupture that's never been sutured,” is an engaging presence so there’s a lot of entertainment value in watching her talk with students, discuss the recent remake of “Roots” with her white husband (Peter Born), and play with her daughter, all elements that give the intense performance art segments a great grounding. I’d be remiss if not to mention how well-timed and funny the woman’s work can be as well. Though what we see of Okpokwasili’s show leans towards darkness, there are cracks where the light gets in. I’d like to see the entire performance some day.

MAY IT LAST: A PORTRAIT OF THE AVETT BROTHERS (Dirs. Judd Apatow & Michael Bonfiglio, 2017) I was a bit distracted as this film began, as the legendary D.A. Pennebaker (DONT LOOK BACK, MONTEREY POP, ZIGGY STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS, THE WAR ROOM, do I need to go on?) sat down next to me in Fletcher Hall ten minutes before the film began. Pennebaker, and his wife and film-making partner Chris Hegedus are regulars at Full Frame who helped get the festival started so it’s not the first time I’ve been in their presence, but the idea of watching a rock doc sitting next to the guy who invented rock docs was hard to shake.

When the doc, which is about the popular North Carolina folk rock band, the Avett Brothers, began and there was footage of the group walking through the hallways of a venue before a show, I couldn’t help but think about how the well worn tropes of following around and filming artists backstage, hanging with them in hotel rooms, and capturing them interacting with fans are all things that the guy to my right did first. But soon into Judd Apatow and Michael Bonfiglio’s film, I was able to focus on the story of a band I basically knew nothing about. 

Hailing from Mount Pleasant, N.C., Scott and Seth Avett are depicted as two simple farm boys who get along great together unlike other famous musician brothers like Ray and Dave Davies of the Kinks, or those damn Gallaghers in Oasis. They start off rebelling against the country music of their father’s generation and take to wanting to be Nirvana, but they returned to their roots after a revelatory encounter with bluegrass icon Doc Watson at Merlefest, the musician’s annual traditional-music festival in Wilkesboro, N.C.

The doc takes us through the Avett Brothers’ career, but largely focuses on the making of their 2016 album, “True Sadness.” One of the film’s highlights is a stirring studio take of “No Hard Feelings,” which emotionally drains the brothers. They ask producer Rick Rubin if they can take a break and Scott and Seth walk outside to regain their composure as various folks congratulate them on the performance. Alone, they discuss how weird it feels to get complimented for work that calls upon very personal, naked feelings (particularly about Seth’s 2013 divorce). The scene reminded me of something Bob Dylan said when complimented on his classic 1975 album “Blood on the Tracks,” which many felt dealt with his divorce, “It's hard for me to relate to people enjoying that kind of pain.”

Speaking of Dylan, the guy who shot famous footage of his legendary 1965 and 1966 tours was right next to me! Sorry, back to the Avett Brothers. 

Despite having seen them at the Cat’s Cradle in Carrboro back in 2005, I’m not really familiar with much of their music but I enjoyed the concert sequences, and may give them more of a listen as a result of this fine summation of the Avett ethos. The screening was well received by the audience, but the panel Q & A afterwards in which guests Scott Avett, the band’s cellist Joe Kwon, and codirector Michael Bonfiglio came onstage to great applause, was a lovefest with questioners who the band often recognized from their gigs taking them for their music more than asking them questions.

The last film I saw at the fest was Yance Ford’s STRONG ISLAND, which was an encore on Sunday afternoon because it won two awards at Full Frame’s Awards Barbeque at noon: the Charles E. Guggenheim Emerging Artist Award and the Center for Documentary Studies Filmmaker Award.

The awards are well deserved as Ford’s film is an impassioned exploration of his brother’s murder by a mechanic in Long Island, New York in 1992. William Ford Jr., 24-year-old black teacher, was going to confront the people at an auto repair shop who weren’t fixing his family’s car after an accident that was actually caused by the same people. William was unarmed, but was shot and killed by .22 caliber rifle fired by Mark Reilly, a white 19-year-old mechanic. Reilly was not indicted by a white judge and an all-white jury for the crime and went free, while the Ford family sat in mourning helplessly by.

In extreme close-ups, Ford, pours his heart out about the grief over his brother’s senseless killing, the racist system, and his transgender coming out, while his mother, Barbara, and sister, Lauren, give us their takes on this angering, all too common tragedy.

A well made, straight forward, and up close and personal film that wrestles with the wounds from injustice that can never be healed. STRONG ISLAND is one of the strongest documentary debuts I’ve ever seen.

I probably could’ve come up with a better last line for that review, but I’m tired after four days of docs in Durham so it’ll have to do. 

So that’s Full Frame 2017! It was one of my favorites of all the years I’ve attended.

If you haven’t already, please check out my coverage of Days One, and Two.

More later...

Full Frame 2017: Day Two

Day two of the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival held at the Carolina Theatre and the Marriot Convention Center in Durham, N.C., was a lot livelier than the first day as the weekend crowds starting pouring in. This was also due to the capper of the second day of the fest - the North Carolina premiere of Amir Bar-Lev’s epic four hour Grateful Dead band biodoc, LONG STRANGE TRIP. But first let me get to some other worthy docs I saw on Friday.

THE ORIGINAL RICHARD MCMAHAN
(Dir. Olympia Stone, 2016)

This fascinating 20 minute film, part of the New Docs Program, concerns outsider artist Richard McMahan, who makes miniature versions of some of the world’s great paintings. Hailing from Jacksonville, Florida, McMahan is the creator and curator of the Mini-Museum, a traveling and online exhibit of thousands of his hand made replicas including intricate recreations of Egyptian tombs, 20 years in the making. McMahan’s work is incredibly impressive, and he's a likable, if extremely eccentric character (he wears period costumes at his installations) so the doc is a short but sweet treat.

Next up, I saw another film in the New Docs Program, Garret Atlakson’s MOMMY’S LAND, which was making its World Premiere at this year’s Full Frame.

The film tackles the protest that was formed by a group of women who were dislocated when the corrupt government of Cambodia forcibly evicted them from their homes in 2006 and 2007 to make way for new developments funded by World Bank.

The former residents, mostly young mothers, of the Boeung Kak Lake (BKL) area in Phnom, Penh, whose houses were flooded and destroyed by property developers filling the lake with sand, rally behind a fellow resident, an elderly grandmother they call “Mommy,” in often violent demonstrations. Watching this unfold in brutal confrontations with Military Police, while uncaring ruling party members stand uncaringly on the sidelines, is heart breaking. Mommy’s perserverance is inspiring, and filmmaker Atlakson’s eye never shies away from the excruciatingly uncomfortable imagery of bloody assaults that were made on these women fighting for the land titles owed to them. It can be a bit grueling, but the timeliness of Mommy and her people’s struggle makes for a powerfully emotional 68 minute viewing. 

ALL SKATE, EVERYBODY SKATE
(Dir. Nicole Triche, 2016)

Miss Doris, a woman in her late 70s who runs a 50-year-old roller skating rink above a post office in Topsail Island, N.C., is the subject of this charming 20-minute short. Miss Doris takes us through her operation, her family’s history, and displays her own skating skills for us as well. Another inspirational tale of an old unstoppable lady, albeit under severely different circumstances than MOMMY'S LAND, Triche’s film celebrates Miss Doris and her beloved community venue, which looks like, with no plans for retirement, she will keep rolling as long as she can.

BALLOONFEST (Dir. Nathan Truesdell, 2017) This is a six minute curiousity, mostly made up of archival TV news reports, about the United Way of Cleveland, Ohio, attempt in 1986 to break a world record by releasing over a million balloons in the air. However, a high pressure system approached, causing many of the balloons to end up in Lake Erie making a search for two missing fishermen difficult. Despite the event not being recognized by the Guiness Book of World Records, the initial release of the balloons, with swirling clouds of color engulfing the skyline is quite a site to be seen. 

LONG STRANGE TRIP (Dir. Amir Bar-Lev, 2017) I’ve had my ups and downs with the Grateful Dead. I loved them in the late ‘80s to mid ‘90s, seeing them close to a dozen times, but came to loathe them later in that decade. I’ve come back around these days, but still wouldn’t consider myself a Deadhead. I’ve loved the work of Amir Bar-Lev (MY KID COULD PAINT THAT, THE TILLMAN STORY), so I was pysched to see his take on the iconic San Francisco band’s legacy (Martin Scorsese being one of the film's executive producers added to that as well).

This new four hour, career-spanning documentary (thankfully containing an intermission), features a wealth of archival footage, both vintage and current interviews from band members, and a intoxicating exploration into the Dead’s philosophy and vision. That philosophy can simply be stilled down into “having fun” as the late lead guitarist/singer Jerry Garcia puts it, and that vision can be seen as to just keep on truckin,' but there's a lot of ins and outs and what haves you involved, as the Dude would say.

From the 1965 Acid Tests, to a hilarious late ‘60s appearance on the Playboy After Dark TV show where they dosed the coffee pot, to their famous 1972 European tour to their performance in Egypt in 1978 to their surprise success in the ‘80s with their first top 40 single (“Touch of Grey”) and beyond, Bar-Lev’s pacing never falters, and the music never stops. Bar-Lev, in attendence at the fest, boasted before the screening that he and his crew utilized the original individual instrumental tracks of many of the band's studio recordings to provide a musical bed for the film, and it sounded great through the Carolina Theatre’s Cinema One speaker system.

A must see for Deadheads and those curious about the band, but maybe not recommended for haters as such a lengthy breakdown of the ethos of Garcia and company is doubtful to win them over. For the folks in the audience I saw it with on Friday night, some of whom shouted their appreciation for individual gigs being mentioned, it was a delight from beginning to end.

Coming soon: Coverage of Days Three & Four. And be sure to check out coverage of Day One, if you haven’t already.

More later...

Full Frame 2017: Day One

With a chill in the air, day one of the 20th Annual Full Frame Documentary Film Festival kicked off today in Durham. The Festival is celebrating its 20th year (it started as the Double Take Documentary Film Festival in 1998), with a roster that includes 48 films in the New Docs program (27 features and 21 short films), 23 films in The Invited Program (22 features and one short film), and 19 returning films included in the DoubleTake program (one from each year in Full Frame’s history).

Here’s what I saw on the first day of this year’s four day fest:

STILL TOMORROW (Dir. Jian Fan, 2016) 

This New Docs selection is the story of Xiuhua Yu, a Chinese woman who rose from poverty when her poem, “Cross Half of China to Sleep with You” became a hit on social media, having been shared over a million times in 2015. 

While the writing of Yu, who suffers from cerebral palsy, is discussed on talk shows and seminars in Hong Kong and Bejing, her life back home in a rural village in central China is in dark contrast as struggles with a cold, unfaithful husband and her mother dying of cancer. 

The sexual nature of Yu’s poetry is scrutinized, with her responding “So, I’m a slut, so what?” on one show, but the achiness in her desperate pleas for divorce, and her yearning for freedom via her newfound fame is ever present. 

The sharp cinematography by director Fan and Ming Xue beautifully illustrates Yu’s world and her poems, which are quoted via titles throughout, while the sound design by Li Danfeng captures the serene isolation of Yu’s farm-life amplifying the wind through the fields with sweet between scene sweeps. A thoughtful, stirring doc that’s as poetic as its subject.

LIFE - INSTRUCTION MANUAL (Dirs. Jörg Adolph & Ralf Buecheler, 2016)

This German film, part of the Invited Doc Program this year, is a perplexingly disjointed affair. It’s a bunch of short segments, all about how humans learn to do things, covering a wide range of activities – from childbirth classes to indoor skydiving to some weird movement that involves people walking around with their arms lifted above their heads as a coping mechanism.

That last bit comes off a bit Monty Python-ish, as does the stream of consciousness editing of these fragments of film together, but the doc feels thematically off, and gets really tedious pretty early on. There were a number of folks in the audience that left early who I bet felt the same way. One scene has us watching a robot slowly get a carton of orange juice out of a refrigerator then take forever closing the door of the appliance. Like so much of this film, I was left wondering what the point of all this purposely out of context stuff was.

THE GROWN-UPS (Dir. Maite Alberdi, 2016)

Fairing much better on Full Frame’s first day this year was Chilean filmmaker Maite Alberdi’s THE GROWN-UPS, also part of the Invited Docs Program. Alberdi paints the picture of four middle-aged students at a Chilean school for people with Down’s Syndrome, who spend their time training at the school’s catering class. A couple of them, named Anita and Andres fall in love, but their respective families, and Chilean law, are against them marrying and living together.

THE GROWN-UPS is a touching window into the kind of lives that don’t get much exploration on the big screen. Anita, who is certainly the film’s protagonist, gets a lot of sympathy from the camera as it captures her sad, worrying eyes over her predicament, but is also able to make us laugh with how she rolls her eyes at yet again hearing the repeated “Who are we? Conscious adults” mantra as said in unison by her classmates.

There are some story strands that aren’t followed up, and I can’t decide if the ending is simply sad or unsatisfying, but overall Alberdi’s doc is a keeper. I’m just unsure if the device of blurring, or obscuring the images of everyone around the central subjects – i.e. staff, family members – was really necessary.

Best Doc of the Day: STILL TOMORROW

More later...

Full Frame 2016: Days 3 & 4

Despite the sunniness, it felt like the last gasp of winter on Saturday and Sunday with very chilly winds flowing through the buildings of downtown Durham. There was even a freeze warning on Saturday night. But why am I talking about the weather when I was warm and cozy inside the Carolina Theatre on both days watching what I could of the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival roster? I'm not sure so let's just get to the docs.

First up, Roger Ross Williams' LIFE, ANIMATED, which focuses on the autistic world of Owen Suskind, the son Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Ron Suskind.

Owen was diagnosed at age 3 with regressive autism and started speaking only in gibberish but over the years of watching every animated Disney film repeatedly, he began to communicate with his family through the dialogue from those classic cartoons. Williams, who won an Oscar for Best Documentary Short Subject for his film MUSIC BY PRUDENCE, filmed Owen as he graduated school and moved out of his parents’ house to live on his own for the first time. Owen’s father, Ron, mother Cornelia, and brother Walt appear to provide their insights, while animation by Mac Guff brings to life both the families’ memories, and Owen’s own original story “The Land of the Lost Sidekicks” (there's also lots of clips from the over 40 classic Disney films that Owen has memorized).

Based on father Suskind’s 2014 book “Life, Animated: A Story of Sidekicks, Heroes, and Autism,” Williams’ film is a heartwarming, inspiring work that I could tell greatly touched the audience at Fletcher Hall on Saturday afternoon. That was strongly evident when Owen took the stage, with the filmmakers and members of his family, for a Q & A after the screening. Owen delighted everyone with his impressions of Disney characters, and his short to the point answers. Anybody who’s cynical about what effect Disney has on the world should see this film – it’ll make them change their tune for sure.

Following that was Jedd and Todd Wider’s GOD KNOWS WHERE I AM, about the troubling life of a mysterious woman whose body was found in an abandoned New Hampshire farmhouse. Next to her was a diary in which she documented her starvation and loss of sanity. The woman was identified as Linda Bishop, who had been in and out of psychiatric hospitals and served time in jail. Bishop's sister, Joan; and daughter, Caitlin Murtagh, alongside testimony from various therapists and social workers, appear to help tell her story, but its the voice-over readings from Linda's diary by actress Lori Singer (probably best known as the female lead of the 1984 hit FOOTLOOSE) that are most affecting.

GOD KNOWS WHERE I AM is a chilling, dark doc debut from the Wider brothers, who have learned well from producing several of ace documentarian Alex Gibney's project. I know that Linda's sad, haunting story will stay with me for some time.

Another promising doc debut I saw on Saturday was Margaret Byrne's RAISING BERTIE, which follows three young African American men - Reginald “Junior” Askew, David “Bud” Perry, and Davonte “Dada” - over the course of five years as they grow into adulthood in the rural county of Bertie, here in North Carolina. The trio attended The Hive, a school for at-risk students, together before striking out on their own, but when the alternative school closes , they have to return to the system that originally failed them.

Byrne's camera captures some intimate moments with these men as they struggle to find their place in adulthood in this unpretentiously framed narrative. There's a fly-on-the-wall feel to the proceedings as we witness such events as Davonte attending his senior prom, and Reginald visiting his biological father in jail. As RAISING BERTIE concentrates on the coming-of-age arc of its subjects, it raises some vital questions about what options and opportunities exist for young people in rural America. It doesn't have any answers to these questions but, through these men, it stirringly taps into the power of individual perserverance.

Saturday night, I took in Ido Haar's PRESENTING PRINCESS SHAW, which was part of this year's Center Frame series. Having been previously clueless to its content, I was very taken by the tale of how its star, Princess Shaw (real name: Samantha Montgomery), became a viral sensation when a Israeli musician, Kutiman (real name: Ophir Kutiel) used her vocals in a mix with other “found” musical elements to make this striking song:

The doc follows Princess Shaw, who by day works as a nurse in New Orleans, as she finds out (and freaks out) about her internet stardom and travels to Tel Aviv to meet and collaborate further with Kutiman. Originally, Haar's project was supposed to be about the culture of YouTubers in general, but came to center around the infectious, bouyant personality and sympathetic backstory of Princess Shaw. It was a wonderful choice, as the film is quite possibly not just the most joyous doc of this year's fest, but the most joyous doc I've seen at Full Frame ever.

Princess Shaw herself appeared during the end credits to rapturous applause, and went on to give us a live performance of her signature song: 

In the Q & A, our lady of honor revealed that she is soon to be working on a proper album for release later this year, stressed that she's not a star yet as she's still working her nurse job, and repeatedly shared what was apparently her new favorite expression of excitement: “rock sausages!” Many complain of cyber disconnection in our modern times, but strong, passionate, and (again) joyous stories like this show that the digital age can bring people together. Rock sausages indeed.

Full Frame's closing night film was another major crowdpleaser: Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady's NORMAN LEAR: JUST ANOTHER VERSION OF YOU.

This biodoc of one of the most successful independent TV producers of time (at one point he had five different televsion shows in the top ten in the Nielsen ratings) ought to be mandatory viewing for Millienials so that they can get some understanding of how influential and game changing such sitcoms as All in the Family, The Jeffersons, Good Times, and Maude were in the '70s.

The 93-year old Lear appears in insightful interview segments (which somewhat resemble the ones in BY SIDNEY LUMET but that's a doc given), alongside and overlapping with clips from his classic shows, while family members, friends and collaborators such as George Clooney, John Amos, Louise Lasser, Rob Reiner, and son Ben Lear appear to sing his praises. As a fan of the man who grew up on his shows (I really felt Jon Stewart when he said “you raised me!” to Lear backstage before a guest appearance on The Daily Show), I didn't learn much new, but still highly enjoyed the ride through Lear's rich career. But I had forgotten some of the juicy details about his fighting the Moral Majority in the '80s so the refresher there was very appreciative.

Lear's legacy is so considerable that, unless one didn't have access to footage from his TV library, it would be hard to make a bad doc about the man, but Ewing and Grady (makers of such fine docs as THE BOYS OF BARAKA, JESUS CAMP, and DETROPIA) have assembled an affectionate tribute that made me tear up throughout. Now I want to watch the entire run of All in the Family again.

Okay! So that's Full Frame 2016. Thanks for reading and stay tuned to this space for more Film Babble Blog Fun.

Postscript: LIFE, ANIMATED won The Full Frame Full Frame Audience Award at the Awards Barbecue on Sunday. Click here to see the full list of winners.

More later...

Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy Talks AMERICAN MOVIE For Film Acoustic

Last weekend, possibly my favorite installment so far of The Modern School of Film's series, Film Acoustic, went down in Durham: Jeff Tweedy of Wilco screened and discussed Chris Smith's 1999 cult favorite documentary AMERICAN MOVIE.

The film was well received by the audience at Fletcher Hall at the Carolina Theatre - many of whom had raised their hands when MSOF founder and moderator Robery Milazzo asked afterwards how many had never seen it before - and I enjoyed seeing it on the big screen for the first time, especially considering it was an original 35 mm print.

AMERICAN MOVIE focuses on aspiring Milwaukee filmmaker Mark Borchardt's attempts to complete his short horror film COVEN, so that he can finance his dream project, an epic full-length feature named NORTHWESTERN.

Borchardt's sidekick, the lovably sclubby Mike Schank, who composed the music for movie, got a lot of laughs, but it was the director's Uncle Bill, who skeptically financed the project and is recruited to act, that most got the crowd rolling. 

After the screening ended, Milazzo relayed a message from Schank: “Happy Memorial Day. Thank for showing the film and thank you, Jeff Tweedy.” Milliazzo then added, “An hour later he texted me back and said ‘Oh, if there are any hot girls in the audience that would like to call me, you c an give them my number.’ And then he texted me a half an hour later – ‘Girls only though.’

Millazzo introduced Tweedy as “former lead singer of Land Ho! And Black Shampoo,” and the Wilco singer came out to rousing applause. 

Tweedy discussed the film and several other subjects with Milazzo, including the Wilco rock doc I AM TRYING TO BREAK YOUR HEART, his contribution to the BOYHOOD soundtrack, and his mother's love of movies. Tweedy's 15-year old son Sam also came on stage for a brief bit and answered some questions.

But the best news for fans was that Tweedy had brought his guitar and performed solo acoustic versions of “Less Than You Think,” “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart” (see video below), “The Losing End (When You’re On)” (Neil Young cover), “One By One,” and “You Are Not Alone.”

Here are some other highlights from the excellent evening:

On why he choose AMERICAN MOVIE:

Tweedy: “One of the reasons that we wanted to watch this movie together is the idea that making things and immersing yourself in making things is an incredibly healthy and sustaining thing to do. I really have this fantasy that if everybody in the world were given the opportunity to make things, uh, it sounds pretty naïve and simple saying it out loud, but I think the world would be a much better place. Everybody would be on the side of existence as opposed to destruction. Creation as opposed to destruction.

That’s the main focus in our house that it’s ‘study hard, do good, try to be kind to people, and try to make stuff – it makes you happy.’”

“I see him (Borchardt) as a very optimistic and vocal person. He preaches it to everybody around him. To Bill, to everybody in the community, you know ‘Do something! You gonna die and not do something? Do something!’ 

I think people might, on one hand might be sort of cynical in indulging him, On the other hand I think that there’s a deep sense that they have to honor that. They have to honor that least there’s somebody in their midst that doesn’t feel like giving up.”

Milazzo: “You guys are roughly the same age, you and Mark, I think there’s a year apart – what separates you from Mark?”

Tweedy: “I ask myself that question all of the time. I think that anybody that has had any modicum of success whatsoever asks themselves that question periodically. ‘Why me? Why not a lot of other people that have worked very very hard or our very talented people.”

On Sam Jones' 2002 documentary I AM TRYING TO BREAK YOUR HEART:

Milazzo: “Was it a big decision to kind of open yourself up that way?”

Tweedy: “No, I can honestly say it was a naïve decision. I didn’t feel like Wilco had a persona worth any spending any amount of effort to prune or shape, I just didn’t think there was anything that could come from it that would be that, I don’t know. I felt that a lot of people who spend time on their personas, and their image, were people like Madonna, and I don’t know, maybe Bob Dylan, somebody like that, but it has never been a part of how I view what it is that I’m doing.

But I learned a lot - after the fact I realized that I would’ve never done that again. We basically just let him make the movie, and we didn’t have any say. Well, I mean, we probably could’ve pulled our songs from the movie, you know, so we could have some control if it was really really terrible, but we didn’t. We didn’t do anything. We just saw it when it was done, and said ‘oh, that’s uncomfortable.’ Imagine how very similar Mike and Mark might’ve felt if they went to a screening of this when it first came out.”

Milazzo: “What did you learn about yourself though? You know, in the sense of watching the documentary of Wilco, did you ever have a moment ‘oh, that’s my response’ or ‘that’s my process’? In a sense worrying that you don’t want to put yourself in that again, did you see yourself differently?”

Tweedy: “Yeah, there are…I haven’t seen it in a long time, but there were a lot of moments watching that movie, well, there were a lot of moments during the filming of that movie where, uh, the first time there was an observing ego in the room – the camera…”

Milazzo: “Camera – you do such a beautiful song called ‘Kamera,’ which speaks to that…

Tweedy: “It just felt like, I don’t know if I’ve ever been able to put myself outside of myself enough to see what a camera might be seeing. And so there were a lot of moments during the process of making that record where I was like ‘oh, no – oh, no, that’s what the camera is seeing.’ Obviously, this is not – our relationship with Jay (Bennett) for example was made painfully obvious that there was a big problem in the way we were interacting, the way he was interacting with the band. And it’s really sad that it took a camera to do that or that we weren’t together enough, or grown up enough as people to see that without a camera.”

On Tweedy's mother, Jo Ann Tweedy, who passed in 2006:

Milazzo: “One thing I thought was interesting about your cinema DNA is how it connects for your Mom, and Judy Garland of all people. Because when we asked about a movie I thought we’d be getting a Judy Garland film, not that that would’ve been wrong at the time. But what about when you were young and your Mom watching films with you or around you…”

Tweedy: “My mother was a night owl. She was a high school drop-out who had my sister when she was 16 years old, and I was born much much later than everyone else in my family. I’m 10 years younger than my youngest brother. And so by the time I came around, she had really given up on parenting. You know, there weren’t a lot of boundaries so I was up all night watching movies while my Mom fell asleep with cigarettes in her mouth. 

Yeah, right, it sounds like a terrible parenting thing – it is. But my memory of it looking back is actually really warm. It’s a warm feeling. It’s actually one of the images that comes to mind when I miss my mother. But in St. Louis, the St. Louis TV stations had a movie program, or a late night movie called the “Bijou Picture Show.” I think that’s kind of a Midwestern thing. There were a lot of Judy Garland movies that they would show, a lot of black and white, now it’s Turner Classic Movies – it’s the same thing.”

Milazzo: “If performance cures a sort of anxiety, what does writing cure for you?”

Tweedy: “Well, I think that, I have a lot of thoughts about this. Because I can’t help myself, we’re pretty philosophical in our house and we end up talking about a lot of things like this. I think the best that I can come up with, is that it’s like a really really healthy way of killing time for me. It’s actually, uh, I don’t know, I like not being there. I like to be gone, unburdened enough of having an ego. Which is like what happens when I get completely immersed in the process of making a song. Or making something – it becomes, you become this thing – it’s a maker.

But it’s not necessarily…in fact the more the ego gets involved, the more it suffers. It really suffers when you start to think ‘well, are people gonna think I’m cool because this is so great?’ Then you’re done. The song is done and you can’t return from that. You should put it away until some other time when you can get lost in it again. 

That’s why I said ‘once a song is done, it’s on a record, or finished recording it, or finish writing it even, it’s already done all the good stuff that it was going to do for me. After that it’s all pain and suffering. Because even if people like it, it’s never enough. Or they see it somehow different, or they’re indifferent – that’s the worst of all. ”

On his songs in BOYHOOD:

Milazzo: “BOYHOOD, the great Richard Linklater film, which to me was the best film of last year…”

Tweedy: “I think it should’ve been called ‘Motherhood.’ (Audience applauds) I think the most compelling character in the whole movie was Patricia Arquette. Beautiful.”

Milazzo: “Speaking of beauty, one of your songs is in it. How did that come about? Could you demystify that process? What’s it like to hear your song in a really killer movie in a really killer moment?”

Tweedy: “Well, in that movie there’s a Wilco song “Hate it Here” is in a scene, an actual scene where they’re talking about the song. And I didn’t know it was in there, so it was a little, it actually took me out of the movie a little bit which is kind of a drag. I was like ‘Abbey Road’?”

But anyway, and then the song ‘Summer Noon’ is in the movie also, but it’s kind of on the radio in the background, and I think they wanted something that would be really contemporary when the movie came out. And so they asked me to write a song for the movie and I was working on ‘Suikerae’ so we sent them that. ‘How about something like this?’ Then they said ‘great,’ and they put it in the movie. And then for some reason it was disqualified for an Oscar though. So Maybe you could talk to somebody about that.

“Summer Noon” is basically cut and pasted like a Warhol, like Zerox. I thought, people do that with art, why don’t they do that with songs? I had a minute and a half long song, and I thought, why don’t I just put it on the record twice? Back to back.”

On Wilco’s breakthrough album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot:

Milazzo: “The first attempt at a release was at an interesting moment in history, because the first attempt at release was…”

Tweedy: “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, the original release date was September 11th, 2001. The artwork, the entire package, everything was done. And we were dropped so we lost that release date. Obviously, over time it’s weird that it’s become associated with that.

The lyrics on the whole record were really meant to be…I was thinking a lot about America, and I really wanted to know what I thought of America. Having grown up being somewhat skeptical of America, growing up in a time where I was heavily influenced by punk rock as a young teenager. Very, I don’t know, not willing to submit to the party line of America. I don’t know, I just really, I think a lot of things, ‘oh, there’s a cash machine, is that evil? Is a cash machine evil, or is it just blue and green. You know, what actually is the evil part of America? Because I really don’t think like anything I grew up seeing was particularly evil, but I also knew a lot of things weren’t right.

Anyway, lyrics aside, I don’t know how cinematic they might be, but the actual construction of that record, very very consciously constructed with the idea of cinematic pacing.

Milazzo: “And the transitions, the lack of thereof…”

Tweedy: “Everything was recorded in a lot of different formats, and what we would end up doing is we would mix the first verse of a song and then completely wipe the board and everything completely clean, and start all over for the second verse. And then splice those two together. So we could never remix that record if we wanted to – it doesn’t exist.

And one final thought from the evening:

Tweedy: “It’s one of the weird things about rock music – it’s a youth obsessed culture within a youth obsessed culture, and it’s disheartening sometimes when you start to become known as ‘Dad Rock.’ That doesn’t help.”

The next installment of Film Acoustic, on Monday, June 22nd, looks like another winner: Will Butler of Arcade Fire screens and discusses Terry Gilliam's 1996 sci-fi thriller TWELVE MONKEYS. Tickets are on sale now.

More later...

Full Frame 2015: Days 3 & 4

The 2015 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival was, as usual, quite a feast of non-fiction, and after four days I am very stuffed. So before I crash, I'll get right to the docs I attended out of the dozens screened on Saturday, April 11th, and Sunday, April 12th. (Oh, yeah – please visit my recaps of Day 1, and Day 2):

First up, Brad Barber and Scott Christopherson's PEACE OFFICER, the story of former Sheriff William “Dub” Lawrence's investigation into the 2008 homicide of his son-in-law by the SWAT team Lawrence originally created. Other similar cases involving inappropriate uses of force by the police are touched on in this calmly delivered treatise on what many call the militarization of law enforcement. Disturbing crime scene photos, news reports, and raw footage of SWAT raids capture the eye, but it's Lawrence's softly spoken dissection of the matter that is most compelling.

Next, I thoroughly enjoyed MAVIS!, Jessica Edwards’ biodoc of gospel/soul singer Mavis Staples. Sure, it's got the expected mix of interviews, concert footage, archival TV appearances, but its warmth and affection for its legendary subject elavates it greatly above the standard music doc formula. Staples dicusses her history with the Staples Singers who had a string of hits in the '60s and '70s, her solo career, her collaboration with Prince, her recent comeback which included winning her first Grammy for her produced 2011 album “You Are Not Alone,” which was produced by Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, and, most importantly her close relationship with her father, gospel R & B icon Pops Staples.

One of many highlights deals with Bob Dylan's marriage proposal to Ms. Staples in the '60s (he ran it by Pops first). She says she “didn't take it to heart,” however “we may have have smooched.” Edwards' exceedingly endearing portrait also offers plenty of powerful live performances. In one clip, Staples promises her audience that she and her band have come to “bring some joy, some happiness, inspiration, and some positive vibrations.” I felt all of those things while watching this wonderful portrait.

Dee Hibbert-Jones and Nomi Talisman's LAST DAY OF FREEDOM moved me more than I thought an animated short doc with starkly spare imagery could. The 30-minute film illustrates the visage and memories of Bill Babbitt, whose Vietnam vet brother Manny was executed in 1999 for the murder of a 78-year old woman in 1980. Babbitt, still shaken after all these years, tells how he feels his brother has been done wrong by the system, which didn't take into account that he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. I can totally see this emotionally impactful short getting an Oscar nom. *

Now, I’ve heard about the revolutionary nationalist organization, the Black Panther Party my whole life, getting bits and pieces of their story here and there, but I never got the full picture until veteran filmmaker Stanley Nelson (WOUNDED KNEE, JONESTOWN, FREEDOM RIDERS) schooled me, and a full Fletcher Hall house, on the subject Saturday night. It was via Fletcher's newest historical doc, THE BLACK PANTHERS: VANGUARD OF THE REVOLUTION, the third Center Frame screening at the fest this year, a vital, electric, and sadly timely history lesson that everyone should be taught. 

With rare archival footage, new interviews with surviving former members, vintage news reports and the like, Nelson takes us through the brief but explosive period in the late ‘60s, in which the Panthers, headed by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, rose to power in the black community. Fighting against police brutality and for more freedoms for their people, the Panthers made many enemies including FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.

In the film’s most striking sequence, one of the movement’s leaders, Fred Thompson (who has a cameo in another film at the fest, HERE COMES THE VIDEOFREEX), is murdered in a raid by Chicago police in conjunction with the FBI. This was mainly because, as the Bureau’s documents later revealed, they wanted “to prevent the rise of a black messiah.”

But this blurb barely scratches the surface of the wealth of information and insight into the world of the Panthers Stanley’s film powerfully provides. THE BLACK PANTHERS is set for limited release in September, so keep an eye out for it.

As I've said before many times, the last slot of the evening on Saturday night at Full Frame is a perfect one for a rock doc, and this year Tom Berninger's MISTAKEN FOR STRANGERS really hit the spot. The filmmaker is the brother of Matt Berninger, the frontman for the indie rock band The National, and his film concerns Tom's disastrous stint working as a roadie on the band's 2010-11 European tour. 

Sloppily shot, yet infused with an undeniably crude sharm, this project amusingly deals with Tom having to cope with having a famous rock star sibling, while coming to terms that he has to get his life together. It's a funny, shabby, and fussy doc, much like its maker, and I enjoyed the flashy live footage despite its choppiness (i.e. don't go to this film expecting much in the way of full musical performances).

There have been many Brando documentaries before, but Steven Riley’s LISTEN TO ME MARLON distinguishes itself by being largely narrated by the man himself. With access to hundreds of hours of audio tapes Brando had recorded throughout his career, Riley and co. have taken the most telling excerpts, supplemented them with an engrossing collage of film clips, screen tests, production stills, and many never before seen photos, and constructed the most intimate Brando biodoc to date.

It starts off weirdly with a digitally animated 3D image based on facial scans Brando made not long before his death in 2004, but settles into a thankfully more conventional groove. It’s fascinating to hear Brando discussing his method acting approach (including much praise his acting teacher Stella Adler), his failed marriages, his son Christian’s murder conviction, and resolving his issues with his father.

Of course, film fans will relish hearing him dish on such films as ON THE WATERFRONT, MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY, CANDY (“worst movie I ever made in my life”), THE GODFATHER (“I wasn’t sure I could play that part either”), and especially APOCALYPSE NOW (“I read the script and it was stupid, it was awful. I told Francis, ‘you’re making an enormous error’”). LISTEN TO ME MARLON should satisfy long-time fans, newbies, and folks who are curious to get a glimpse behind the curtain. 

Lastly, for sure, the funniest doc of the fest this year, but with a title like DRUNK STONED BRILLIANT DEAD: THE STORY OF THE NATIONAL LAMPOON it really had to be. 

Director Doug Tirola (ALL IN: THE POKER MOVIE, HEY BARTENDER) has done a great job here of depicting the history of how the legendary humor magazine became a comedy institution that produced live shows like “Lemmings” (launching the careers of John Belushi, Chevy Chase, Christopher Guest), classic records like “That’s Not Funny, It’s Sick,” and, most importantly for the masses, smash hit movies like ANIMAL HOUSE and VACATION.

The story of National Lampoon is largely the story of co-founder Doug Kenney, considered by many to be the heart of the original publication. Kenney, who you may know as Stork in ANIMAL HOUSE (which he co-wrote), was the charismatic comic genius behind much of the Lampoon’s most popular parodies in the ‘70s, but he would disappear for long periods of time, and his death in 1980 falling from a cliff in Hawaii has his friends and colleagues still scratching their heads as whether it was suicide or an accident.

Chase has been well documented as being an asshole, but in his interview segments here he’s actually charming and funnier than I’ve seen in years; it’s touching to see him a little choked up when he says Kenney was his best friend. Also worth mentioning is Tirola’s clever linking device of using hundreds, maybe thousands, of images of vintage cartoons, graphics, and art from the magazine with the word bubbles changed to echo the relevant quotes spoken onscreen.

Being a comedy nerd from way back, I really dug DRUNK STONED BRILLIANT DEAD. Those in attendance Fletcher Hall that Sunday afternoon appeared to too as they laughed so hard at some bits that it was hard to hear the next thing said onscreen. That’s something I bet Tirola, who told the crowd at the Q & A after, that they were “the best audience,” took as a very good sign.

Okay! So that's another Full Frame. Thanks for reading and stay tuned to this space for more Film Babble Blog Fun.

* LAST DAY OF FREEDOM won The Full Frame Jury Award for Best Short at the Awards Barbecue on Sunday. Click here to see the full list of winners.

More later...