Full Frame Dispatch. 1.

From the change of venue of the opening night party to the American Tobacco Campus to the streamlined - again - ticket process, the message seems to be Full Frame has changed, but it continues to be the same. The Durham-based documentary festival is now in its eleventh year, the first without founder and director Nancy Buirski at its helm. The cinetrix suspects there's a story - there always is - but Buirski's influence continues to be felt through the work of the crack staff and advisory board she assembled in Full Frame's first decade. Buirski, who continues with the festival in an advisory position, was recognized Thursday night with a brief ceremony before the start of the Opening Night selection, Trumbo.

Updated through 4/5.

Following in the footsteps of last year's opener selection, Sydney Pollack's Sketches of Frank Gehry, Trumbo is an artful, beautifully lensed, and at times glossy film, but Dalton Trumbo's own wry, witting, profane voice keeps the film earthy and honest. Archival footage and talking-head recollections are punctuated with appearances by high-profile actors like Joan Allen and Liam Neeson reading the personal letters of the blacklisted writer. Trumbo is a truly awe-inspiring, if a little long, look at the rarest of creatures, a man with the courage of his convictions.

Other Thursday films garnering early buzz include the luminous Up the Yangtze [site], a look at the shoreline villages that will disappear under the waters once China's Three Gorges Dam is completed. Lioness, seeing its North American premiere, also earned plaudits for its frank look at enlisted women in non-combat details who find themselves in the midst of firefights in Iraq.

Personally, your pal the cinetrix was blown away by Forbidden Lie$ [site], the con within a con portrait of "memoirist" Norma Khouri, who wrote an acclaimed account of her Jordanian, Muslim friend's honor killing by her family that was later debunked as fiction. Filmmaker Anna Broinowski brings persistence, good humor and more than a little exasperation to this fascinating, stubborn, seductive subject, who insists always that her stories - all of them - are true.

Only halfway through Friday now, but many more films await. Until then.

Updates, 4/5: AJ Schnack compares and contrasts two Katrina docs, Ed Pincus and Lucia Small's The Axe in the Attic (site) and Carl Deal and Tia Lessin's Trouble the Water (site): "[S]eeing the films together gave me a distinct perspective, one that I surmise may not be entirely borne out by the experiences of others viewing the films individually."

Yance Ford files a first dispatch to POV.

Posted by dwhudson at April 4, 2008 1:22 PM