Next week is the start of the 2013 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival! I’m so excited! I’ll be there all four days to watch films, geek out, tweet, meet filmmakers and industry professionals, blog, and totally revel in all things related to documentary filmmaking. I cannnnnnnnot wait.
In preparation for the fest, I’ve been pouring over the film schedule. They do a great job picking the films for the fest, so it’s always a tough thing to pick out the films I want to see. I usually want to see them all. I’m conflicted each and every year I do this: what films will I see!?!
In recent years I chose to see as many documentaries about war as I could. While working on Abandoned Allies, my feature documentary about the Montagnard people who allied with Americans during the Vietnam War, I was learning how to tell a war story on screen. So I desperately wanted to see how others were doing it.
One of my favorite war docs has become Restrepo. I saw it at Full Frame in 2010 and really enjoyed it. It’s a beautiful feature-length documentary that “chronicles the deployment of a platoon of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley,” as the film’s website states.
Some of the guys featured in Restrepo were at the screening. I really enjoyed watching it with the filmmaker sitting a few rows in front of me, then hearing him answer questions afterwards. They all posed for a photo after the end of the Q&A, which I thought was just wonderful. That was a room filled with love, I’ll tell ya that much. Really cool stuff.
Photo of the folks associated with Restrepo at the 2010 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham, N.C.
Having fallen in love with that film, the guys in it, and its filmmakers, I am really hoping to see Which Way is the Front Line From Here? The Life and Time of Tim Heatherington at the festival this year. I bet it’ll be a tough film to watch, but I really hope to see it.
That may be the only war-related doc I can handle seeing at the festival this year. I consumed so many films with heavy subject matters in recent years. And I’m still healing from the difficult task of producing, directing, and editing Abandoned Allies for nearly five years. I could really use something cheery for a bit.
I’m also hoping to see some North Carolina specific films such as If You Build It and The Editor and The Dragon: Horace Carter Fights the Clan. As a N.C. native, I’m always keen on learning more about our state and its history. And as a N.C. filmmaker, I’m always curious about what’s happening in the film scene here.
If you’re interested in going to the 2013 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, you can buy tickets to see specific films. (Festival passes are sold out.) Tickets went on sale Monday morning, so act fast. They usually don’t last long. Get more information on the Full Frame website here.