Full Frame Film Festival is back this year. How to watch award-worthy films at home.
The film festival that brought “RBG” and “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” to Durham, is back after a pandemic break — virtually — with a lineup of both feature-length and short documentaries.
The Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, which started June 2 and continues through June 6, will offer 36 documentaries during its 24th annual event. This year, the festival will be entirely virtual.
The festival usually sees nearly 10,000 visitors in downtown Durham’s Carolina Theatre and nearby screens. It was canceled last year during the pandemic.
“It’s really easy for audiences and filmmakers to connect both in the theaters and outside of the screening venues,” said Sadie Tillery, artistic director and interim festival director, describing the festival in an interview with The News & Observer.
“It’s an event that fosters conversation and connectivity around the documentary form,” Tillery said.
The documentaries are ticketed via festival passes and tickets for individual films, said Emily Foster, marketing director and associate interim festival director. The festival passes are sold out.
Anyone with an individual ticket can stream the documentary between noon on June 2 and 11:59 p.m. on June 6. Once a film has been started, the viewer has 24 hours to finish it.
“It’s really exciting to pull together an overall lineup of titles, and to allow audiences to be their own curators over the course of the weekend,” Tillery said.
There also will be free, pre-recorded Q&A sessions with most of the film directors during the weekend. A panel on Thursday, “The Creative Power of BIPOC Editors,” featured the announcement of a national database of film editors who are Black, indigenous, or people of color.
Although the film festival has been limited by COVID-19, both by reducing the number of films shown and by moving to a virtual format, the new format has had unexpected perks.
“It’s really exciting to pull together an overall lineup of titles, and to allow audiences to be their own curators over the course of the weekend and to think about what subjects are compelling to them,” Tillery said.
Film Festival Highlights
The film festival will include six world premieres, four North American premieres and five U.S. premieres, according to a festival news release. Films will address topics ranging from young adults coming of age, to gender identity and the impact of coronavirus lockdowns.
The schedule includes four films focusing on high school students: “Homeroom,” “Scenes from the Glittering World,” “Try Harder” and “Fruits of Labor.”
“Within such a small lineup, it’s of note to me that we have a number of titles that are considering young adults at this particular moment in their lives, who are, in each film, navigating all sorts of different circumstances,” Tillery said. “It seems like a pivotal time to be documenting someone’s experience.”
A highlight of the festival will be the film “My Name is Pauli Murray,” which explores the life and legacy of the Durham native, lawyer, activist, poet and priest. The story is primarily illustrated through Murray’s writings. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January.
“Pauli Murray is a trailblazing figure who grew up in Durham, so there’s a strong local connection to the film,” Tillery said.
Another highlight of the festival is “Truman and Tennessee: an Intimate Conversation,” which focuses on the relationship between Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams.
“It looks at Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams and examines the relationship between the authors in their own words,” Tillery said. “It also includes excerpts from films and plays and interviews, as a way of looking back at their lives in tension with one another in a really dynamic way.”
The Full Frame festival is an Academy Award-qualifying festival for documentary short subjects and will be presenting 15 short documentaries as well.
“It means so much to us that filmmakers are joining us to share their work in this space, and even in this challenging moment there are artists that are trying to release their work,” Tillery said. “And Full Frame wanted to be a part of helping to amplify those films.”
Details
What: Full Frame Documentary Film Festival
When: June 2-6
How to watch films: Festival passes are sold out, but tickets for individual films are $12 apiece for feature-length films and $7 for short films. Q&A panels are free but require registration. Film streaming ends at 11:59 p.m. on June 6. Note that some films have a “view cap,” or a specific number of views available.
Info: fullframefest.org
This story was originally published June 3, 2021 at 5:28 PM.