Full Frame Postscript: The Power of Story.

Did the cinetrix call it or what? Man on Wire won the Audience Award on Sunday, as well as special recognition from the Grand Jury. The film benefited from its prime Saturday night spot on the festival schedule. (And it certainly didn't hurt that the post-screening Q&A revealed filmmaker James Marsh to be a floppy-haired Brit so charming and self-effacing he'll no doubt be played in the fiction version of the story by Daniel Day-Lewis.) It heads next to Tribeca.

I suspect that the final film I saw at Full Frame could have given Man on Wire a run for its money, had it not screened second on a Sunday morning double bill. In Weijin Chen's Please Vote for Me, which was commissioned by Why Democracy, a Wuhan primary school class holds its first-ever democratic election of a third-grade monitor. Sounds simple, right? Wrong. The audience quickly started roaring with laughter - tinged with horror - as little emperor Cheng Cheng, bossy Luo Lei, frequently tearful Xu Xiaofei, and their respective parents matter-of-factly resort to a degree of dirty dealing that would make even Karl Rove blush. Cheng Cheng, especially, is a mini Machiavelli, offering bribes and empty promises in exchange for his classmates' votes. When the winning candidate is announced, it comes as a shock.

Much less shocking was that Trouble the Water garnered the Grand Jury Award, as well as the Kathleen Bryan Edwards Award for Human Rights. (The Katrina doc split the Full Frame/Working Films prize with Please Vote for Me.) I'd love to tell you more about Water, but along with Man on Wire, American Teen, Gonzo, Glass, Surfwise, Bigger, Stronger, Faster and Up the Yangtze, it is subject to a press embargo. Up the Yangtze, always a bridesmaid, never a bride, received honorable mentions for both the Charles E Guggenheim Emerging Artist Award and the Full Frame Spectrum Award.

The cinetrix would like an honorable mention as well. For the first time since she began coming to Full Frame four years ago, she actually managed to see some of the eventual award winners this time. A few of the others - Lioness, which received the Center for Documentary Studies Filmmaker Award, and At the Death House Door, which won the Full Frame Inspiration Award and received an honorable mention for the Edwards - she plans on catching at the Independent Film Festival of Boston. Until then, then.

Posted by dwhudson at April 8, 2008 2:27 PM