Film buffs flock to Full Frame

DURHAM -- Filmmakers and spectators flocked Saturday to the third day of the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, held at the Carolina Theatre and other venues, taking in (or trying to take in) many of the 92 films on display.

Although cold, rainy weather put a damper on audience attendance for the first two days, the filmmakers themselves came ready to roll. Director Peter Askin screened the opening-night film "Trumbo," about blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo ("Spartacus"), on Thursday night.

Accompanying him were Christopher Trumbo, the son whose play inspired the movie, and actress Joan Allen, who serves as one of many actors (including Michael Douglas, Liam Neeson and Paul Giamatti) who recite Trumbo's library of letters throughout the film.

The following night, renowned photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders showed off his film, "The Black List," where African-Americans such as Chris Rock, Vernon Jordan, Colin Powell and Sean Combs are interviewed on race in America.

A couple of filmmakers even showed up with their flicks still hot from the editing bay. Stefan Forbes, director of the Lee Atwater documentary "Boogie Man," which played Saturday night at the Weaver Auditorium, said he put the finishing touches on his film the night before he arrived.

"We just put it on videotape ... and our flight gets delayed for four hours," Forbes said at the Friday morning press breakfast. "We got in at 3:30 in the morning."

Albert Maysles, who followed the Rolling Stones for the 1970 documentary "Gimme Shelter," screened his latest, "Sally Gross -- The Pleasure of Stillness," on Thursday afternoon. Maysles, whose camera work also can be seen in the just-released, Martin Scorsese-directed, Stones concert film "Shine A Light," had some choice words for those who remember his film, which captured the Stones' 1969 Altamont concert where a black man was killed by a Hells Angel, as the "anti-Woodstock."

"There was five deaths that happened in Woodstock. Remember the interviews? 'Oh, was it wonderful there.' 'Yes, it was wonderful.' It probably kick-started a drug habit that [those who attended] never could get rid for the rest of their lives," the 81-year-old Maysles said after his screening.

OK, then.

By Saturday, as the sky became clearer, and more people began appearing, things were getting pretty hectic.

Full Frame director of logistics Israel Ehrisman had to beat people away with a stick (not literally, of course) at a Saturday afternoon screening of "The Horseman" as a line of hopeful attendees looking for last-minute seats extended from the Carolina's upstairs box office to the downstairs lobby.

Even William Greaves, this year's recipient of the festival's Career Award, couldn't believe the hustle and bustle. "So far, I don't know what's going on," joked Greaves. "I'm a fish out of water, sampling the aquatic life."

'Brain food' galore

Greaves wasn't the only one having trouble keeping everything in check. "I've been having a great time, but I've been running around like a chicken with my head off," said Hillevi Loven, a curator and producer for the Brooklyn-based documentary arts collaborative UnionDocs.

She is also shooting a movie in Greenville about a Christian rock-and-roll youth center. She did manage to see the Hurricane Katrina documentary "Trouble the Water" and "Be Like Others," which focused on homosexuals in Iran getting sex-change operations to avoid punishment by death.

"That tore my heart out, that film," she said. "It was really sad."

While the fest may leave some visitors in a daze, for filmmakers who have attended Full Frame in the past, they've never felt more at home.

"It's just nice to be in a place where everybody, like, is interested in the same things," said "34x25x36" director Jesse Epstein, adding, "Full Frame is brain food."

The festival will have its closing-day awards barbecue at 1 p.m. today at American Tobacco Campus. For more details, go to www.fullframefest.org.