Durham Dispatch. 3.

Full Frame may be the only film festival where you can travel from a screening to the awards ceremony in a New Orleans-style second line parade. The ebullient boys of the TBC Brass Band, subjects of To Be Continued (by far the best film in the Katrina Southern sidebar, in your humble correspondent's opinion), led the audience from their film out into the sunlight of the Carolina Theatre plaza. Because each film screens just once, I managed to see only two of the winners before the prizes were announced. Never fails. But do look for these films on screens large and small near you, or get to where they're playing.

The big news is the Grand Jury Prize winner, Iraq in Fragments, which was projected in a luminous 35mm print to a sold-out house on Friday afternoon. Special mention went to A Lion in the House, which follows the lives of young cancer patients, their families, and their caretakers over several years. Coproducer/director Julia Reichert was herself diagnosed with cancer in January and took the stage with her chemo-bald head hidden under a cap. See it in the United States on PBS June 21st.

The President's Award for student filmmaking went to Eva Weber's The Intimacy of Strangers [site], a witty short that eavesdropped on Londoners' cell phone calls. The Inspiration Award, recognizing films for their treatment of world religions and spirituality, was granted to My Country, My Country, a portrait of Iraqi physician Dr Riyadh. EXIT, about volunteers at a Swiss assisted-suicide organization, received an honorable mention.

The Women in Leadership Award was given to Smiling in a War Zone. Filmmaker Simone Aaberg Kaern took to the skies to teach a young schoolgirl in Kabul who wanted to be a fighter pilot how to fly a plane. Director Sandhya Suri won The Charles E Guggenheim Emerging Artist Award for I for India, her examination of the South Asian immigrant experience in Britain.

Author Walter Mosley again emptied his pockets, giving $5,000 cash money to Workingman's Death and Sir! No Sir!, winners of the Seeds of War Award. The Working Films Award, which develops a film's outreach plan through distribution, broadcast and beyond, went to Rain in a Dry Land, which followed Somali refugee families in America. Best Short this year was awarded to No Umbrella: Election Day in the City, a look at voting irregularities in Cleveland during the 2004 election. The Center for Documentary Studies lauded the amazing Refugee All Stars, about a band of displaced Sierra Leonean musicians who leave the camps in neighboring Guinea for their homes in Freetown. And the Audience Award went to The Trials of Darryl Hunt, about a wrongfully convicted man cleared after 10 years thanks to DNA testing.

Posted by dwhudson at April 9, 2006 2:08 PM