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.

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Full Frame 2015: Day 2

The second day of this year's Full Frame Documentary Film Festival was as overcast as the first, but to all of us film fans stuffed into the
Carolina Theatre and a few adjoining venues in downtown Durham, N.C. it really didn't matter. As usual, Friday brought a lot more people to the event, all lining up for helpings of primo infotainment. I was happy to be among them to take four fascinating films.


My Friday kicked off with Frederick Gertten's BIKES VS CARS.

It's really not that much of a spoiler to say that Gertten's film is rooting for bikes. With stunning statistics and factoids like “In Toronto, a pedestrian is hit by a car every three hours, a cyclist is hit by a car every seven hours,” Gertten's globe-trotting doc contrasts how different cities are more bike-friendly than others (Copenhagen and Amsterdam are voted the bike capitals of the world), and examines how traffic congestion is going to get way worse (with 2 billion cars projected to be on the planet by 2020) unless we embrace alternatives. 

A few of the threads the film depicts involve bicycle activists fighting for safer bike lanes in São Paulo, Brazil, while in Toronto, Canada, Mayor Rob Ford (yeah, that guy) battles what he calls a “war on cars” by having bike lanes removed. BIKES VS CARS is a smart, concerned film that makes a lot of good points, but in the face of taking on the politically powerful auto industry sadly it's gonna make a lot of people say “Yeah, but what are you gonna do?”



Now onto a very different kind of cycling film:

People of a certain age remember how much of a sensation motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel was in the '70s, but the ups and downs of his unique career have mostly been forgotten. Daniel Junge's exciting biopic BEING EVEL puts it all in perspective by sorting all the publicity stunts, rocky relationships, and ego-trips that made the man into a fiery narrative that made the Full Frame audience gasp throughout. 

Interviewee Johnny Knoxville, one of the film's producers, seemingly an Evel Knievel expert, breaks down how Knievel's death-defying feats paved the way for his own Jackass, and the whole extreme sports culture, while friends and family add their remembrances. But the best part is the archival footage of the stunts themselves including the Snake River Canyon jump in Idaho, and his unsuccessful attempt to jump 13 buses in London (he followed this up by successfully jumping 14 buses back in Ohio). A beautifully constructed blast from the past (loved seeing those Evel Knievel toy commercials again), BEING EVEL is the most fun of the films I've seen so far at the fest.

A subject I hadn't heard of before is explored in Jon Nealon and Jenny Raskin's HERE COME THE VIDEOFREEX, a profile of a collective of counter culture artists and activists armed with newly invented portable video cameras, who were intent on providing an alternate history of the late '60s and early '70s to what was being broadcast on the major TV networks. Despite having a pilot rejected by CBS - a program that included interviews with Abbie Hoffman and Black Panther Fred Hampton - the Videofreex went on to launch the first pirate TV station, Lanesville TV, and produce thousands of hours of material. 

It can be a bit wearying to make it through all the old grainy black and white clips excerpted here, but the insightful interviews with founding members David Cort, Parry Teasdale, and Mary Curtis Ratcliff keep it from lagging. Neolon and Raskin's portrait of these ragtag pioneers will, with hope, keep their story from being just a footnote in the history of guerilla television.



Ratcliff perhaps sums it up best: “A lot of people said in the early days that the Videofreex could be one of the signposts toward a future in which we all have video cameras. Which at the time meant nothing to me, but now I see it came true. We’re all Videofreex.” We certainly are.



Lastly, I attended the best documentary of the fest so far: Marc Silver's 3 AND 1/2 MINUTES. Part procedural, part courtroom thriller, it breaks down what the media labeled the “Loud Music” Trial, in which a black teenager was shot and killed by a middle aged white man over an argument at a gas station in Jacksonville, Florida in 2012. Michael Dunn, a 45-year old software developer, had asked 17-year old Jordan Davis and his three friends to turn down their music, and their tense exchange escalated when Dunn pulled out a gun and started shooting at their car. Davis was killed by one of the 10 bullets fired, and Dunn sped away with his fiancée.



Yes, it's another angering instance of a white man murdering an unarmed black youth, and Silver's extremely well constructed film takes us into the aftermath with compelling clarity. It's a heart-wrenching experience to see Davis's parents, Ron and Lucia, fight for justice and for stricter gun control laws, and it's incredibly angering to hear audio of Dunn's prison phone calls to his fiancée, in which he claims he's the real victim. After the screening, Jordon's father, Ron Davis spoke (after a huge round of applause) and participated in a Q & A, and had many powerful, and undeniably righteous things to say especially about embracing racial differences. I walked away very moved by the entire experience.

Stay tuned for coverage of days 3 & 4 of Full Frame.

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Full Frame 2015: Day 1

Looking back on my coverage of years past, it looks like the first day of the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival is usually an overcast, gray day. This year was no exception for the annual event, now in its 18th year.

But, of course, the downbeat weather didn’t deter film fans from filling up the screening rooms at the Carolina Theatre and the Marriott Convention Center in downtown Durham, N.C., to see what they could out of the 49 new docs, including 12 World Premieres, 13 North American Premieres, and two U.S. Premieres, which will be showing Thursday through Sunday.

The first film I attended was Albert Maysles’ IRIS, the recently deceased documentarian legend’s last completed film (Maysles died on March 5, 2015 at age 80). 

In Programming director Sadie Tillery’s introduction, she spoke of having the filmmaker in her thoughts since his death, and missing his presence at the festival. It was a sentiment that was felt throughout the fine, very funny film, a biopic of fashion and interior design innovator Iris Apfel. 

IRIS feels like it was shot over the course of a few weeks or months with Maysles following around the now 93-year old Apfel as she tries on flamboyant outfits, attends high profile events, and putters around her and her husband Carl’s Park Avenue apartment filled with scores of eye-catching antiques, but co-producer Rebekah Maysles, daughter of the late director, said in the Q & A after the screening that it was filmed over the course of three years.

In between the modern day visits with the Apfels, we get bursts of back story via vintage photos, many magazine covers, and insightful interviews that trace how the style maven went from working at Women’s Wear Daily to working on White House Restoration projects for nine administrations (“We had a problem with Jackie,” Carl says, but Iris doesn’t let him explain), to founding her own company, Old World Weavers.

Just about everything the “geriatric starlet,” as she calls herself, is pricelessly witty, like when she quips that she’s “very much alive and just walking around to save funeral expenses,” and the film pops with every cut – largely due to Apfel’s many crazy wardrobe changes. The much missed Maysles, who can be seen a few times onscreen, has made a portrait as vibrant, colorful and funny as its still thriving subject. Oh, and I loved seeing how many pairs, in different styles and colors, she has of her trademark over-sized, thick framed, cartoonishly round eyeglasses.

Next up, I was pretty taken by TIGER TIGER, the new doc by George Butler (PUMPING IRON, GOING UPRIVER). The film follows Dr. Alan Rabinowitz, co-founder of Panthera (a non-profit big cat conservation organization), who tells us that he’s been “tracking and studying tigers and convincing governments to save those tigers for at least the last 25 years,” as he travels to the Sundarbans to do what he can for the endangered Royal Bengal Tiger population. 

There is extra weight added to the mission as Rabinowitz reveals he has Leukemia, and that this may be his last expedition. Rabinowitz's calm and soft spoken manner entertainingly educates us on the dangers the tigers face (especially when it comes to the Chinese medicine trade), the close-up video footage of the tigers in the wild is stunning, and the film is lushly shot by cinematographer Tom Hurwitz (THE QUEEN OF VERSAILLES). TIGER TIGER is a real winner of a wildlife doc.

The film that followed for me, Betzabé García's KINGS OF NOWHERE (Spanish title: LOS REYES DEL PUEBLO QUE NO EXISTE) was way less engrossing. With no narrator, or narrative really, the film focuses on three families who live in a flooded village in Northwestern Mexico. Everybody else has moved away so we get to hear their stories of what used to be, and how they get along daily. That is, in between long stationary shots of the ruins and the rivers that run through them. The serene shots of the crumbling buildings and tortured terrain are well composed, and there's a few fascinating anecdotes here and there, but the film drags so much that it feels a half hour longer than its 83 minute running time.

Finally, the last film for me of the day was the highly anticipated, much buzzed out rock doc, Brett Morgen's KURT COBAIN: MONTAGE OF HECK (horrible title, but it was the name of a mixtape Cobain made so there's that).

Morgen and editor Joe Beshenkovsky have sifted through tons of photos, drawings, notebook scribblings, fliers, crude audiotapes, home movie footage, TV appearances, and fuzzy live footage to tell the story of the long gone Nirvana frontman, and its a dizzying and often senses-assaulting blend, or more accurately, mess. 

The bloated biodoc, which will premiere on HBO on May 4th, was definitely the loudest doc I saw all day (enough to make some old couples leave). The effect can be jarring when cutting to the quieter interview segments which feature family members, bandmate Krist Novelselic, widow Courtney Love, and most interesting, Cobain's ex-girlfriend Tracy Marander. But for some reason, no Dave Grohl!



At 132 minutes, this is an everything but the kitchen sink doc that really should've been gutted. The animated scenes are gratuitous, there's way too much poorly shot video of Kurt and (an often topless) Courtney goofing off, and there's no reason to have two almost full songs from Nirvana's MTV Unplugged set, as legendary a landmark as it was, when that material is so well known, and arguably overplayed already.



The hodge podgy MONTAGE OF HECK has a lot of intriquing stuff in it, but its all over the place as its trying to be in your face at the same time, and that took away from what could've been a more essential, and more emotional experience. Still, hardcore fans should dig how much of it has never been seen before.



Okay! So that wraps up day 1 of Full Frame 2015. Check back tomorrow for coverage of Day Two, and for live tweeting of the event follow @filmbabble. 

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Gearing Up For Full Frame 2015

Tomorrow, the 18th annual Full Frame Documentary Film Festival will kick off at the Carolina Theatre, and the Marriott Convention Center, in downtown Durham, N.C., so I’m gearing up for the next four days of non-fiction fun.

Click here for schedule and ticket info.

This year’s roster includes a Tribute to New Jersey film maker, and POV alum, Marshall Curry; and a thematic program, involving the ethics of representation in documentary filmmaking, curated by director/producer, Jennifer Baichwal, but I’m sensing a different kind of theme happening in that docs about the long-running political magazine “The Nation,” the Ohio indie rock band The National, and the comedy publication and production company National Lampoon will be shown. Yay, nationality! I guess.

As a preview, I thought I’d highlight several of the docs I’m looking forward to this festival:

IRIS (Dir. Albert Maysles)

This profile of fashion icon Iris Apfel is the last completed film by the late, great Albert Maysles, who passed away last month at the age of 88. It screens on Thursday morning at 10:30 am, at Fletcher Hall.

KURT COBAIN: MONTAGE OF HECK

(Dir. Brett Morgen)

With hope, this authorized and much buzzed about film rock doc will be the definitive biodoc of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain. The trailer does look promising, but I'm not sure how I feel about the animated bits. Screens at 10 pm, Thursday, February 9th, at Cinema 1.

THE BLACK PANTHERS: VANGUARD OF THE REVOLUTION (Dir. Stanley Nelson)

Master documentarian Stanley Nelson, who has made many solid docs focusing on the modern history of African Americans for PBS's “American Experience” series, may have his most incendiary subject yet in this film examing the radical Black Panther Party. Screening at 7:30 pm, Saturday, February 11th, at Fletcher Hall.

MAVIS! (Dir. Jessica Edwards)

This biodoc of the gospel legend Mavis Staples looks like a winner as well. It screens at 1:30 pm, Satuday, February 11th, at Fletcher Hall.

Finally, one of the few docs I've seen already that will be showcased this weekend at Full Frame:



HARRY & SNOWMAN (Dir. Ron Davis)

This is the incredibly touching tale of how Harry de Leyer, a Long Island, New York, riding instructor trained a horse he bought for $80 to become a world famous Champion show jumper in the late '50s and early '60s. Ultimately a story of a great friendship between man and animal, the narrative is a neatly put together essay of photos, new interviews, and, best of all, footage of Snowman's jaw-dropping jumps. Highly recommended. Screens at 4:30 pm, Saturday afternoon at Fletcher Hall.

There are lots more that I'd like to highlight, but many don't have trailers yet. Please visit back over the next several days for my coverage of the films above and many more at Full Frame 2015.

Again, click here for ticket info.

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