'The Loving Story' will debut at Full Frame

Durham's Full Frame Documentary Film Festival is in full swing today, featuring more than 100 films from dozens of countries. For one filmmaker, it's a sweet homecoming.

Nancy Buirski, who splits her time between Durham and New York, founded the festival in 1998 when she attended Duke University's Center for Documentary Studies. After running the festival for 10 years as executive director, she returns this year as a featured filmmaker.

Buirski's debut documentary, "The Loving Story," centers on the case of the Loving family, the interracial couple at the center of the 1967 U.S. Supreme Court ruling - Loving vs. Virginia - that overturned anti-miscegenation laws in America.

"The Loving Story" is a compelling and skillfully assembled film featuring never-before-seen film footage of Richard and Mildred Loving, their children, and the two ACLU attorneys who took their case to the nation's highest court.

Speaking from her home in Durham, Buirski discussed her return to Full Frame, the Loving case and the fun to be had visiting old drag racing strips.

Q: When you resigned as Full Frame director in 2008, did you leave specifically to make this film?

Well, that was 10 years running it, and I felt like that was a good demarcation. I mean, I loved Full Frame and am very proud of it, but I knew I wanted to make films. I wasn't sure that this was going to be my first.

Q: So what was that initial spark for "The Loving Story"?

It was actually Mildred Loving's obituary [in 2008]. From running the festival, I had seen so many films, particularly in the civil rights arena, that I was pretty sure there had never been anything done on the Loving story. Or even on the topic of miscegenation, which I think is a fundamentally important issue to our country and our racial legacy.

Q: How did you get all that amazing footage of the Lovings at home?

I went to do an interview with the ACLU attorneys, and they remembered that there had been a woman, Hope Ryden, that had been filming the Lovings at the time. So I contacted her, and she hadn't thought about this footage in 44 years. She found it on her closet floor.

When I looked at it, I knew I had a wonderful film. Instead of the typical style of that day, talking-head interviews, it was just her observing the family and what they were doing. I realized I had a chance to really immerse the viewer in the Lovings' home life.

Q: In the footage, Mildred Loving is incredibly beautiful and has such a sweet, charismatic presence. Did you know right away you had a "star," so to speak?

I was well aware that we had one of the most compelling protagonists that anyone could hope for. It was a documentary filmmaker's dream. She has this angelic but strong quality. You really feel the intimate pain she was going through, but you also feel her dignity.

Q: You never connect the dots overtly, but the film clearly has a resonance with current same-sex marriage issues. In one passage, you highlight the specific text of the Supreme Court ruling, that the right to marry rests with the individual, not the state. Was that a deliberate reference to the gay marriage debate?

Well, those were some of the most dramatic pieces of the argument in any case, but we were very aware of the resonance. There are a lot of analogous issues to same-sex marriage and interracial marriage arguments. That particular passage is invoked all the time.

Q: In one of the few dramatic re-creation scenes, you show Mildred hiding in the trunk of a car to sneak back into Virginia and visit her family. I was just wondering - where did you find that car?

I was with my producer, Elisabeth James, one of our cinematographers, Rex Miller, and our sound man, Mark Barroso. We were shooting B-roll by the old drag strip that Richard [Loving] raced on. This guy had a '58 Ford, and he let us use it - so long as he drove it. He wouldn't let us drive it.

There were a lot of great moments like that where things just came together. Some films you feel were just meant to happen.