Wrapping Full Frame.

AJ Schnack wraps the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival for indieWIRE: "Sporting a limited number of premieres - and generally eschewing the premiere frenzy that marks a number of top festivals - Full Frame concentrated on a line-up of some of the best nonfiction titles of the past year." And AJ's got the full list of winners at his own site, plus pix.

Three reviews from Chuck Tryon:

Updated through 4/11.

• Trouble the Water is "one of the most personal, gripping narratives about Hurricane Katrina that I have yet seen."

• At the Death House Door is "a powerful indictment of the death penalty, one that introduces us to the emotional transformation of [prison chaplain Carroll] Pickett without cheap sentimentality."

• "[W]hile I found myself compelled by American Teen's] individual stories, I did have some reservations about what the film seemed to be telling us about high school life."

Yance Ford looks back on the festival for POV.

Updates, 4/9: As a new guest blogger for FilmInFocus, Docurama's Liz Ogilvie looks back on the last day.

"One of the most entertaining films of Full Frame was Christopher Bell's Bigger Stronger Faster*, which takes the steroids hysteria dominating sports media over the last five years and turns it on its head," writes Chuck Tryon, who's been thinking, too, lately about "Iraq War (Movie) Fatigue.

Updates, 4/10: The Independent Weekly has a recap.

Bulletproof Salesman "introduces us to Fidelis Cloer, a war profiteer who sells armored cars to diplomats, journalists, and others working in Iraq," writes Chuck Tryon. "Bulletproof Salesman, like [Michael] Tucker and [Petra] Epperlein's two previous documentaries on the Iraq War, Gunner Palace and The Prisoner Or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair, avoids any simple political positions, instead choosing to introduce us to one face of a man who profits off of war. The film works, in part, because Cloer is a natural salesman, selling himself just as quickly as he sells bulletproof cars and vests, as well as other safety devices. In fact, as Variety reviewer Joe Leydon observes, there is an extent to which Cloer seems like he would be a charming dinner guest until you develop a full understanding of his occupation and its dependence on the continuation of the war, or perhaps of war in general."

Update, 4/11: Once again, Chuck Tryon: "Because of my proximity to Fort Bragg, one of the films I was most curious to see at Full Frame was Full Battle Rattle, Tony Gerber and Jesse Moss's documentary about a simulated Iraqi village, Medina Wasl, set up in California's Mojave Desert.... [W]hat compelled me was not the degree to which these narrative representations of the Iraq War are inadequate–that's pretty obvious–but the way in which the representations actually seem to shape the war itself. As one commenter at Full Frame observed, Jean Baudrillard would have a field day with this film."

Also: "As Tom Hall notes in his Sundance review, Man On Wire primarily plays as a heist film."

Posted by dwhudson at April 8, 2008 8:37 AM