Jessica Edwards and Gary Hustwit Curate the 2024 Thematic Program: “In Process: Documenting Creativity”

Full Frame has announced the 2024 Thematic Program curated by award-winning filmmakers Jessica Edwards and Gary Hustwit.

The 2024 Thematic Program, titled “In Process: Documenting Creativity,” examines the creative process through films that illuminate how artists—on both sides of the lens and across a variety of mediums—make their work. The series features six selections, four features and two shorts, and considers both the triumphs and the uncertainties involved in producing art and transforming personal experience into public expression.

“Full Frame has always been one of our favorite festivals, so when Sadie asked us to curate the Thematic Program, we were thrilled,” said Jessica Edwards and Gary Hustwit. “We’re both obsessed with the creative process, and we’re excited to share films that take a unique approach to documenting artists and their work. We hope Full Frame audiences will find as much inspiration in these films as we do.” 

Read the entire press release here.

2024 Thematic Program
In Process: Documenting Creativity

A Bigger Splash / United States (Director: Jack Hazan)
Jack Hazan’s intimate and innovative film about English-born, often California-based artist David Hockney and his work honors its subject through creative risk-taking. The improvisatory narrative-nonfiction hybrid features Hockney—a wary participant—as well as his circle of friends, and captures the agonized end of the lingering affair between Hockney and his muse, an American named Peter Schlesinger.

Christo’s Valley Curtain / United States (Directors: Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Ellen Giffard)
Christo’s Valley Curtain celebrates the Bulgarian-born artist’s dramatic hanging of a huge orange curtain between two Colorado mountains. Since the late 1950’s, Christo’s large-scale temporary works of art have helped change our perception of art and society.

Mur Murs / France, United States (Director: Agnès Varda)
After returning to Los Angeles from France in 1979, Agnès Varda created this kaleidoscopic documentary about the striking murals that decorate the city. Bursting with color and vitality, Mur Murs is as much an invigorating study of community and diversity as it is an essential catalog of unusual public art.

A Poem Is a Naked Person / United States (Director: Les Blank)
Les Blank considered this free-form feature documentary about beloved singer-songwriter Leon Russell, filmed between 1972 and 1974, to be one of his greatest accomplishments. Hired by Russell to film him at his recording studio in northeast Oklahoma, Blank ended up constructing a unique, intimate portrait of a musician and his environment.

The Poot / Iran (Director: Elham Asadi)
The Poot serves as a beautifully crafted tribute to the ancient Iranian tradition of carpet weaving, documenting the detail and precision that goes into each hand-loomed creation.

Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One / United States (Director: William Greaves)
Director William Greaves presides over a beleaguered film crew in New York’s Central Park, leaving them to try to figure out what kind of movie they’re making. A couple enacts a break-up scenario over and over, a documentary crew films a crew filming the crew, locals wander casually into the frame: the project defies easy description. Yet this wildly innovative sixties counterculture landmark remains one of the most tightly focused and insightful movies ever made about making movies.