press release

April 5, 2007 : Full Frame Announces 2007 Festival Panels & Workshops

Addition to special programs features new works of Jem Cohen and the Southern Documentary Fund presents In-the-Works

(Durham)--Full Frame Documentary Film Festival founder, CEO and Artistic Director Nancy Buirski announced the full line up of panels which will round out the extensive programming at the tenth annual festival (April 12-15) in Durham, North Carolina. From a look back over the decade with ten dynamic filmmakers and writers, the panels travel from the brave new worlds of video on the web and non-fiction gaming to Africa, the changing landscape of the documentary film business, the truth and reconciliation commission in Greensboro, film preservation, and a "how'd they'd do that?" look at community-based outreach on two successful global warming films. The panels focus on hot-button issues and bring together an impressive roster of moderators including ABC and NPR's Robert Krulwich; indieWIRE's Eugene Hernandez, Emmy-award winning journalist and former assistant secretary of State for Public Affairs and State Department spokesman during the Carter administration Hodding Carter, III, The New York Times’ David Carr and more. Experts serving on the panels include HBO’s Sheila Nevins, Cinetic Media’s John Sloss, Participant Production’s Diane Weyermann, and Netflix’s Ted Sarandos. In addition, workshops on vlogging and moving from digital to film round out the special offerings this year as well as a special panel following the screening of HBO's much-anticipated film, To Die in Jerusalem.

Africa Stories: This year Full Frame received more submissions about Africa than ever before. The panel will bring these filmmakers together to discuss the growing interest in telling the stories of Africa by those who are mostly from outside the continent. Led by a festival director from Ghana, the panel will look at the urgent and surprising films being made by filmmakers from the international community and ask, why now and who will listen?

Moderated by Lydie Diakhate (Director, The Real Life Documentary Festival, Ghana).
Panelists include Philippe Diaz (The Empire in Africa), Sean Fine (War/Dance), Haile Gerima (Harvest 3,000 Year), Louise Hogarth (Angels in the Dust), Jamie Meltzer (Welcome to Nollywood), Mira Nair (Founder, Maisha Film Lab), Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt (Lumo), Michael Skolnik (Without the King), Annie Sundberg (The Devil Came on Horseback).

Digital to Film: Alpha Cine Demo: Hosted by Alpha Cine Labs, Seattle With the revolution in digital filmmaking, more and more filmmakers are able to capture their ideas on screen. Getting their movies in front of wider audiences on the BIG screen is another story. There are many choices for taking digital project to film. Alpha Cine can show the ins and outs of the process. The audience will learn how to take digital video to film by reviewing sample clips transferred to 35mm from a number of sources including mini-DV, DVCAM, Beta, Digibeta, HD 24p, S16mm and 35mm DI’s. This hugely successful annual workshop is essential for the practical independent filmmaker.

Digital to 35mm clips will include: Jesus Camp, Iraq in Fragments, Born Into Brothels,
The Blood of Yingzhou District, Control Room.

Documentary Gaming: Following the screening of Playing the News, this panel will examine the exciting (and sometimes disturbing) world of interactive nonfiction gaming. Filmmakers and other experts will look at the interesting repercussions of experiencing the real world this way.

Moderated by Tim Lenoir (Kimberly Jenkins Chair for New Technologies and Society at Duke University).
Panelists include Anne Garreta (Visiting Professor in Literature at Duke University), Jigar Mehta (Playing the News), Marcin Ramocki (8 Bit), Justin Strawhand (8 Bit), among others.

The Power of Ten: A Conversation: The curators of the thematic series come together to discuss the personal and cultural impact of their selected films. They will be discussing these films as turning points on their own artistic journeys and why this matters to us in 2007.

Moderated by Robert Krulwich (Correspondent; ABC News, NPR).
Panelists include St. Clair Bourne, Charles Burnett, Ariel Dorfman, Cara Mertes, Michael Moore, Walter Mosley, Mira Nair, DA Pennebaker and Julia Reichert.

Preserving Documentaries Forever: Everything you ever needed to know about preserving documentaries. Experts look at everything from negative restoration, audio repair, print and digital conservation and climate-controlled storage in the service of saving documentaries and creating a legacy for future generations.

Moderated by Margaret Bodde (Executive Director, The Film Foundation).
Panelists include Schawn Belston (VP of Asset Management & Film Preservation, 20th Century Fox), Fran Bowen (Partner, Trackwise at Full House Productions), Karen Glynn (Visual Materials Archivist, Perkins Library, Duke University), DA Pennebaker (filmmaker), and Russ Suniewick (President of Colorlab Corporation).

Reaching Out on Global Warming: Sponsored by The Fledgling Fund

This panel explores two approaches to community outreach on one of the most pressing issues of our time—global climate change—in Everything’s Cool and An Inconvenient Truth. Using these case studies, the panel will compare strategies as varied as national marketing promotion, grass-roots word of mouth efforts and Web viral campaigns, as filmmakers and their outreach teams find innovative ways of getting their messages to the widest audiences possible with the hope of affecting change.

Moderated by Diana Barrett (President, The Fledgling Fund).
Panelists include Lisa Day (Vice President of Corporate and Community Affairs, Participant Productions), Judith Helfand (Everything's Cool), Robert West (Co-Founder and Executive Director, Working Films) and Diane Weyermann (Executive Vice President of Documentary Production, Participant Productions).

Show Me the Money: The Reality of the Documentary Heyday
Industry leaders discuss who is really benefiting from new documentary platforms and delivery systems. Together the panelists ask about the bottom line in the ever-changing business models of theatrical, television and downloadable distribution.

Moderated by Eugene Hernandez (Editor-in-Chief, indieWIRE).
Panelists include Dan Klores (Crazy Love), Sheila Nevins (President, HBO Documentary and Family), Tom Quinn (Head of Acquisitions, Magnolia Pictures), Ted Sarandos (Chief Content Operator, Netflix), Steve Savage (President and Co-Founder, New Video, Docurama) and John Sloss (Principle, Cinetic Media).

To Die In Jerusalem, Full Frame will feature a panel in conjunction with the film.

Panelists include Avigail Levy (subject, To Die in Jerusalem), Hilla Medalia (filmmaker), Kathleen C. Wallace, J.D., LL.M. (Conflict Resolution Specialist and Professor at Duke University and North Carolina Central University School of Law), among others.

Truth and Reconciliation Panel: Sponsored by John Hope Franklin Center for Interdisciplinary and International Studies at Duke University

With guests from each of the films in the Southern Sidebar, the panel approaches the common project of seeking justice and resolution for racial injustices of recent times. The filmmakers will discuss the motivations behind these powerful, truth seeking documentaries. Activists and community leaders share insight about their work on the ground among communities trying to rebuild faith. Following screening of Greensboro: Closer to the Truth.

Moderated by Hodding Carter III (Professor of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Former President and CEO of the Knight Foundation).

Panelists include Godfrey Cheshire (Moving Midway), Robert Hinton (Associate Director of The Africana Studies Program at New York University), Rev. Nelson Johnson (Executive Director of the Beloved Community Center of Greensboro), Lisa Magarrell (International Center for Transitional Justice), Signe Waller (Vice President Greensboro Justice Fund), Marco Williams (Banished) and Adam Zucker (Greensboro: Closer to the Truth).

Video on the Web: Inventing the Future: TimesTalks: The New York Times Speaker Series
Accompanying Full Frame’s new program <frameset>, this panel looks at independent and institutional online videos. The program features over a dozen independent videos that premiered online and highlights the innovative and varied world of user-generated content, personal filmmaking that calls the Internet home. The panel looks at the changing creative, legal and business models that are both exciting and baffling to a new community of documentary filmmakers, whether independent or working for hire.

Moderated by David Carr (Columnist and Reporter, The New York Times).
Panelists include Brian Conley (Alive in Baghdad), Jennifer Jenkins (Director of Duke University’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain), Peter Jordan (filmmaker, Darfur Rising), Daniel Liss (pouringdown.tv, world map), Lawrie Mifflin (Executive Director of Television & Video, The New York Times), among others.

Vlogging Workshop: Interested in starting your own video blog? Full Frame brings in established vloggers to conduct this hands-on workshop covering all the basics.

Led by Jay Dedman (www.momentshowing.net), Ryanne Hodson (ryanedit.blogspot.com) and Michael Verdi (www.michaelverdi.com).

In addition to the panels, Full Frame and The Southern Documentary Fund (SDF) will present In-the-Works, a unique opportunity for audiences to screen documentaries in different stages of production and to participate in the critique process. The Southern Documentary Fund is a collective of North Carolina-based media artists dedicated to the production of documentary projects made within or about the American South. It will give North Carolina filmmakers the opportunity to receive feedback from a dedicated assembly of their peers and serious documentary enthusiasts. In-the-Works will be facilitated by the Emmy-Award winning filmmaker, Dante James, whose work includes the groundbreaking PBS series, Slavery and the Making of America. Yo Tek: A Uganda Tennis Story, directed by Rex Miller is the first film chosen for this special program.

Full Frame has also announced a screening of three new works by Jem Cohen: Building a Broken Mousetrap, a fierce and passionate concert film featuring the Dutch band, the Ex; NYC Weights and Measures, a lyrical comment on street photography in post-9/11 New York City; Blessed Are the Dreams of Men, lovely and haunting in its simplicity this short film captures a group of anonymous travelers as they drift through an unidentified landscape. Cohen’s film Benjamin Smoke won the 2001 Full Frame Grand Jury Award.

The Full Frame Documentary Film Festival is produced by Doc Arts Inc. a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. The presenting sponsors are The New York Times and Duke University.

Contact:

Full Frame Documentary Film Festival
919.687.4100
info@fullframefest.org