Durham Dispatch. 2.

When people look back at the 2006 festival, this may be the year that Full Frame got too big. Even with an additional venue in the mix - the sizable Civic Center - there have been sellouts and shutouts at more than just the marquee events. This is good news for the filmmakers but has proved frustrating for attendees and otherwise patient staff alike.

Naturally, the opening night selection, Sketches of Frank Gehry was a big draw, with first-time doc director/longtime Hollywood luminary Sydney Pollack present for a post-film Q&A with Alan Berliner. A production for PBS's American Masters series, Sketches beguiles with a winning subject in garrulous Gehry, but its ace in the hole is Gehry's psychoanalyst, the now 97-year-old Dr Milton Wexler. Sharp as a tack, Wexler states frankly that he's turned away Gehry wannabes because "I can open up the flood gates, but if there's no flood...." The film tries to capture the beauty of sites like Bilbao, but it suffers from its reliance on not-so-notable architecture experts Barry Diller and Mike Ovitz. Still, it should bring in some pledge dollars for public television after its theatrical run in May.

Bearded eminence not-yet-grise Ken Burns was also in effect, screening a work-in-progress episode of his forthcoming PBS series on the second world war. Word on the street was the well-attended screening showed more of what we've come to expect from Burns's style of filmmaking. He's come up with amazing unseen footage from 1944, but then, we expect nothing less from a guy with his resources - I mean, he's Ken Burns.

Durham resident Branford Marsalis already can be counted on to turn out to support a good cause whenever one beckons, but he's a New Orleans boy at heart. So he and brother Ellis Marsalis III joined filmmaker St Clair Bourne for a Southern sidebar presentation of Bourne's 1989 doc New Orleans Brass and to promote the Musicians Village housing complex, which Marsalis initiated with Habitat for Humanity on land in New Orleans. To celebrate the recent ground-breaking, a short set by the Branford Marsalis Quartet capped the program, setting a Harry Connick, Jr composition, "Such Love," next to New Orleans standards "Basin Street Blues," "Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans" and a swinging "Bourbon Street Parade."

Soon after, a small second line parade broke out in the plaza in front of the Carolina Theatre. There, the high school student members of the TBC Brass Band brought a little flavor from New Orleans' seventh and ninth wards to promote To Be Continued, the doc about them that screens Sunday. The cinetrix predicts a big turnout for the boys tomorrow: Festival goers were already queueing up for the evening's Center Frame, Al Franken: God Spoke when the concert began.

Other flicks with a bit of buzz include James Longley's beautifully shot three-parter, Iraq in Fragments, and the charming Micha X Peled's powerful examination of globalization's effects on teenage Chinese peasant girls who work long hours for pennies in the Lifeng blue jean factory, China Blue. The racy clips and cheeky animation in Kirby Dick's This Film Is Not Yet Rated, which debuted at Sundance, got plenty of late-night laffs Friday, while fellow Park City alum Lauren Greenfield's eating disorders doc Thin moved viewers to tears Saturday afternoon. Producer-director Rebecca Snedeker was also all smiles after her examination of the white supremacism still present in high society Mardi Gras balls, By Invitation Only, sold out. James D Scurlock's Maxed Out indicted our addiction to the consumer credit system in the United States, which destroys lives and families and drives debtors to desperate measures, including suicide. And Alan Berliner invited filmgoers to stay up late with Wide Awake, his exploration of the science of sleep and the grim reality of insomnia.

Speaking of sleep, is it only Saturday? Is it already Saturday? Grab a seating pass, there's more to come.

Posted by dwhudson at April 9, 2006 11:59 AM