FULL FRAME DOCUMENTARY FESTIVAL TO HONOR MARCEL OPHULS AT THIS YEARS FESTIVAL, APRIL 1 – 4, 2004

HBO’s film Elaine Stritch at Liberty, based on Elaine Stritch’s Tony Award-Winning One-Woman Broadway Show, to have its World Premiere; Stritch will join Ophuls, Barry Levinson, Tom Fontana, Harry Shearer and others as special guests

Elaine Stritch at Liberty, HBO’s documentary film on Elaine Stritch’s one-woman Broadway show will open this year’s Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. The critically acclaimed festival is set for its April 1 – 4 run with a slate of top-name filmmakers including Marcel Ophuls, Tom Fontana, and Barry Levinson; a controversial curated theme program called “Hybrid;” and a new award sponsored by writer Walter Mosley called Exposing the Seeds of War. Harry Shearer, known for his political satire as well as his contributions to “The Simpsons” and the mockumentary genre, will also be at the festival for an “Evening With…” program.

The opening night film has become a much-anticipated event at Full Frame. Housed in the historic Carolina Theatre in downtown Durham, the festival launches with a premiere and then follows with a celebrated “Party Under the Stars.” Scorsese’s The Blues™ , Ted Bogosian’s The Press Secretary, and Steven Ives’ Seabiscuit are examples from previous years. This year’s selection promises to deliver the same kind of excitement.

Elaine Stritch at Liberty combines footage from Elaine Stritch’s acclaimed, Tony Award-winning one-woman show with a behind-the-scenes look at the actress by her longtime friends, legendary documentary filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker and his partners Chris Hegedus and Nick Doob, in their first project for HBO. The Broadway stage production Elaine Stritch at Liberty traces a career that had enormous highs and lows -- alcoholism, failed relationships and standing ovations. It is also the story of Broadway itself, full of hilarious, sometimes sad, tales about Stritch’s friends, stage and screen


legends such as Marlon Brando, Noel Coward, Ethel Merman, Stephen Sondheim, Rock Hudson, Richard Burton, and Ben Gazzara. The show features Stritch’s vibrant performances of such Broadway songs as her signature tune The Ladies Who Lunch, as well as There’s No Business Like Show Business, Broadway Baby, Zip, Why Do the Wrong People Travel? and I’m Still Here. The documentary will air on HBO in May.

Legendary filmmaker Marcel Ophuls will be attending Full Frame this year to receive the Festival’s 2004 Career Award. His illustrious career has produced both documentaries and feature films, including the monumental The Sorrow and the Pity, Memory of Justice, and The Sense of Loss. In his Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie, winner of The Cannes International Critics Prize and the Best Documentary Academy Award, Ophuls shows an aggressive interviewing style that has now become identified with Michael Moore. Past winners of the Career Award have included Michael Apted; Erroll Morris; Barbara Kopple; D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus; the late Charles Guggenheim; and Frederick Wiseman.

“We are honored to have this great artist come to our festival this year,” Nancy Buirski, the Executive Director of Full Frame states. “His presence and voice at the festival will add greatly to the dialogue about some of the most urgent issues facing documentary filmmakers and the public today. This feels like the right year not only to recognize anew his considerable talents as a filmmaker of a certain kind of style, but also his dedication. His films which fearlessly examine war and its ensuing destruction dovetail with our new award which will be given to a filmmaker whose film takes on that challenge of looking at war and its sources.”

That new award, created by writer Walter Mosley, will be called Exposing the Seeds of War. Worth $5,000, the award will be given annually to the film and filmmakers who best explore the issues behind conflicts around the world and give voice to those whose lives have been most affected. Mosley, in addition to his best-selling Easy Rawlins novels, has written a book on America’s war on terrorism called What Next: A Memoir Toward World Peace. He serves on the board of TransAfrica Forum as well as on Full Frame’s board. Exposing the Seeds of War joins a roster of other awards given to filmmakers at the festival.

In addition to the sizable selection of films shown in the general submission category (this years’ submissions top 650), this year’s festival theme is the notion of “Hybrid” filmmaking—those films and artists who provocatively tread the line between fact and fiction to illuminate their work. Curated by Mary Lea Bandy, Chief Curator for the Museum of Modern Art’s Department of Film and Video, the program will look at how changing boundaries between documentaries and features opens up new territory—and questions that go to the heart of what makes a documentary. In addition to films, there will be panels and discussions on the issues raised by the programming. Social satirist Harry Shearer, known for his contributions to “The Simpsons” as well as mockumentaries including last year’s A Mighty Wind, will join festival attendees for a special “An Evening with…” program that will echo some of the themes raised in the curated program.

Filmmakers Barry Levinson, Ted Bogosian and Tom Fontana will screen their “hybrid” film, 50/50, at the festival as well. An experimental film that details one woman’s harrowing journey through the limits of human reproduction in the age of genetic engineering, 50/50 marks a new development in motion picture storytelling. Using a unique hybrid format, the filmmakers were able to explore a controversial, socially conscious story at the intersection of fact and fiction.

Panels, Q&A’s with filmmakers and industry insiders, as well as informal coffee sessions are as much a part of the four-day festival experience as are the over 100 films to be shown, the numerous parties, and the Sunday Awards Barbecue. Drawing filmmakers from around the world as well as around the country, Full Frame Documentary Film Festival will be celebrating its seventh year. The festival, one of five to be so recognized, continues to qualify documentary shorts for Academy Awards®. In 2003, for the second year in a row, Full Frame was the only film festival named in Entertainment Weekly’s annual “It List.” Acclaimed by both national and local media for its programming and its ability to attract top filmmakers, the festival remains the premiere documentary film festival in the country.