Full Frame Dispatch. 3.

For the second year in a row, inclement weather drove the Full Frame Awards Barbecue off the plaza and into the Durham Armory. No matter: pulled pork and the vinegary tang of east North Carolina-style sauce taste good anywhere. The buzz of anticipation was underscored by a string band and anxious conversations about how - and whether - attendees would be able to fly out of Raleigh-Durham in the midst of an April Nor'easter.

First-time director Pernille Rose Gronkjaer had no worries on the weather front. She'd stayed home in Demark, leaving producer Sigrid Helene Dyekaer the happy task of accepting The Charles E Guggenheim (yes, those Guggenheims) Emerging Artist Award for The Monastery on Gronkjaer's behalf. A beaming Sigrid held up her cell phone so that Pernille could hear the audience's wild applause. After she hung up, Gronkjaer must have headed right out to find some celebratory champagne, because she didn't answer when Dyekaer took the stage a second time to accept the Grand Jury Award from Ric Burns, John Sinno and Kirby Dick.

The other big winner was Annie Sundberg, whose already acclaimed Darfur doc, The Devil Came on Horseback, shared Walter Mosely's Seeds of War prize with another African documentary, Uganda Rising, and scored the Full Frame/Working Films Award, which grants filmmakers cash and in-kind promotional support. Both films were part of this year's sidebar, Africa Stories. As Full Frame director Nancy Buirski noted in the program: "Festival sidebars are typically planned years in advance, researched and curated with expertise and care. I wish we could claim credit for such foresight. In the case of the film series we are calling Africa Stories, we can only claim wisdom for recognizing a dynamic trend in filmmaking that revealed an urgent need to deliver stories about the continent."

On a personal note, the cinetrix had her worst awards ceremony showing yet, managing to see exactly none of this year's winners. (What can I say? It's a gift.) Yet I still saw a slate of astonishing films - truly not a disappointment in the bunch - which speaks to Full Frame's impressive depth of programming. Granted, some were once-in-a-lifetime opportunities, like La Vie Commence Demain and Superstar (on 16mm!). But you too can catch plenty of standouts in the coming months. To name only a handful: Jessica Yu's Protagonist and Asger Leth's Ghosts of Cite Soleil play next at the Atlanta Film Festival. Helvetica is slated for Hot Docs. And Alex Gibney's riveting Taxi Driver to the Dark Side, which officially debuts at Tribeca, is not to be missed.

Posted by dwhudson at April 20, 2007 11:12 AM