By M. Sellers Johnson.
One of the American South’s premiere film festivals showcases documentary stories from across the globe….”
After a year-long hiatus, the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival resumes energized this year in downtown Durham, North Carolina. Fully in-person screenings date back to pre-pandemic, so the festival is also celebrating its full return in five years. The audience anticipation this year sing in the air with the blustery springtime winds, as one of the American South’s premiere film festivals showcases documentary stories from across the globe, selected from nearly a thousand submissions. Here are a few highlights and festival tributes.
Among the Wolves (Tanguy Dumortier & Olivier Larrey, 2023) follows Yves and Olivier, as they hole up in a secluded cabin/lookout searching for wolves deep within the northern European forest, along the border of Finland-Russia. In isolating themselves for two weeks at a time, the men quietly converse with one another, ever vigilant for signs of animal life outside their icy lookout window. Tucked away with the duo is cinematographer/co-director Tanguy Dumortier, who stunningly captures the wildlife beyond the cabin windows, as well as the spirit of the men within.
At first, the landscape is seemingly absent of animal life. But soon a murder of crows arrives and encircles a distant reindeer carcass. More wildlife appears with an eagle, a solitary wolverine, and eventually a pack of wolves—first seen through an infrared lens, in the black of night. As the men observe the wolf pack in their wintery habitat, they become more emotionally involved with their subjects. Olivier takes exceptionally sharp photographs of the pack (and other wildlife), while Yves skillfully illustrates their findings. The two even name the six wolves. One of whom is late in pregnancy, with pups on the way.
The emotional core of the film lies in Olivier and Yves’ enthusiasm for their wildlife subjects. The excitement is, indeed, palpable for the audience. And despite the stasis of the wooded locale, the film remains dynamic, dramatic, and even endearing. As the duo returns after their initial winter fortnight for additional visits in the summer and fall, they see the wolves return and mature in their cycles of life. The pack even contends with a large bear, whom they tease with attempted attacks. In the end, when Olivier and Yves leave the lookout site for the third time, the pack now clearly observes them departing. And with the wolves, a new generation of pups signifies the progeny and legacy of this endemic wildlife. The promise of Yves and Olivier’s return seems almost certain.
The North American premiere of Among the Wolves, on the opening day of the Full Frame, signals many other well-crafted documentaries present throughout the festival weekend. Its captivating cinematography evokes everything from Abbas Kiarostami’s 24 Frames (2017) to the plethora of nature documentary series hosted by Sir David Attenborough, that continue to remind humanity of its appreciation and connection to the natural world.
From the Himalayan nation of Bhutan, Agent of Happiness (Arun Bhattarai & Dorottya Zurbó, 2023, see top image) follows the amiable and light-hearted Amber, as an agent of the government’s Ministry of Gross National Happiness. Amber and his fellow agents are tasked with traveling the countryside and administering a 148-question survey in order to assess individual happiness amongst the Bhutanese citizens.
Shown through a collection of different personal portraits, the film centers around Amber as both an agent of the happiness census and a sensitive subject himself. Amber cares for his ailing mother, but he is also beset by immigration challenges. As a foreign national from Nepal, Amber cannot officially marry due to a lack of citizenship—which was revoked in the early nineties, when the Bhutanese government enacted a series of ethnic cleansing policies against citizens of Nepalese origin.
Through Amber’s personal struggles with finding happiness in aspiring to have a family of his own, he introduces us to other subjects who deal with various lifestyle challenges of their own, from poverty to sexuality. Overall, the film covers key themes of transnationalism, Queer identity, nationalism, generational agrarian economies, and ideals of self-worth. Agent of Happiness also has a playful tone, which still honors the hardships and stories of its subjects. And Amber’s hopeless romanticism doesn’t quite quell his lively spirit.
Bhattarai and Zurbó’s wonderfully shot documentary frames the beautiful countryside and rural life favorably. But it also peels back the layers of national pride and the Bhutanese peoples’ ostensible happiness.
Over thirty years in the making is the new jazz documentary on legendary drummer, educator, and activist, Max Roach. Directors Sam Pollard and Ben Shapiro present Max Roach: The Drum Also Waltzes, their biography on Roach, charting his early days in the bebop movement—playing alongside Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Miles Davis—to his mid-1950s quintet formed with trumpeter Clifford Brown, his marriage to vocalist Abbey Lincoln and their political, protest records, and finally to his late-career work as a musical educator.
The Drum Also Waltzes is a more conventionally structured documentary, but it improves as the runtime moves along. While Roach is most popularly known for his “Jazz” musicianship (a term he candidly denounces in favor of “African-American music”), the film does well to emphasize his role in both activism and education. Personal histories covered throughout the documentary shape Pollard and Shapiro’s depiction of Roach, from the traumatic loss of his music collaborator Clifford Brown in 1956, his early battles with substance abuse, professional-romantic relationships, anecdotes of aggressions relayed by his children and ex-partners, and his conscious infusion of political commentary into his music.
Beginning in 1960, Roach collaborated with Lincoln on his first significant protest album We Insist! His activism amidst the civil rights movement of the mid-century continued with a series of other political records. Later in his career, he experimented more with avant-garde sensibilities with a percussion group M’Boom, which was unusual for the time. He considered his time with this music collective as his most adventurous project, working with fellow drummers such as Joe Chambers and Freddie Waits. As an educator, Roach was a faculty member at the University of Massachusetts Amherst from 1972 until the mid-1990s.
The complex percussive qualities that signify his music add to the editorial flow of the film. The rhythms of the cutting complement the in-film recording quite well. The final cut of the film, which ends on a particular hi-hat beat, is especially effective. Yet, what is most striking about Max Roach: The Drum Also Waltzes, is the community of musicians and personalities that contribute to the legend of this historically significant musician. Through accounts by Quincy Jones, Harry Belafonte, Sonny Rollins, Questlove, Fab 5 Freddy, and many other commentators, a propulsive narrative of this powerful musician ensues to great effect.
Personal histories and archives converge in this portrait of progeny, memory, and love. Rachel Elizabeth Seed’s directorial debut, A Photographic Memory, begins with a powerful story of self-inquiry and familial resonance. Her own investigations and creative pursuits touchingly echo that of her subject, her mother Shelia Turner Seed. Having lost her mother as a young child, Seed begins a decade-long (indeed, life-spanning) study in pursuit of discovering her mother through records and interviews. The story is just as much about Seed understanding her mother, as it is a journey of self-discovery.
The effectiveness of the documentary lies not just in the emotional nature of remembrance, but also in the self-actualizing quality of Seed’s narrative, as a search for her mother, and by extension, herself.”
Sheila Turner Seed’s professional career in the 1960s and 1970s is no mystery. Her legacy as a renowned journalist and photographer resonates historically, with this film, and with her daughter. As a former editor at Scholastics magazine and protegee of Cornell Capa, Sheila was also an intrepid freelance writer and photographer. Her most recognizable project, Images of Man comprises recorded interviews from famous 20th century photographers, like Henri Cartier-Bresson, Richard Davidson, Gordon Parks, and Lisette Model (to name a few), and this process reflects a major part of her creative work as an interviewer and a photographer, herself. Sheila’s professional and sometimes personal relationships with her interviewees help to ground the memory and impression of who she was. Rachel’s spirit surely echoes her mother as she searches for people, resources, and acolytes of the mother she never had the chance to know growing up. Seed’s sense of loss seems to galvanize her endeavor to rediscover and honor the memory of her mother, whom she strongly resembles in both countenance and demeanor. Seed’s emotional journey of archival inquiry and self-reflection not only seeks to collect and search for memories and histories of her mother, but she herself discovers herself as an innate part of her mother’s story and legacy. The final moment of the film surely attests to this.
Fortunately for Seed, Sheila had left a considerable archive of audio and film recordings, photographs, journal entries, photographs, and more following her untimely passing. Over 100,000 unearthed archival photos from Sheila, alone, furnish her analog legacy. Seed pools these resources, among others, from both museums and family collections—which extend back as far as a century, on her mother’s side. As for the nature of the archival inquiry, Seed continued to find remembrances and records of Sheila even late into filming, having discovered many of Sheila’s illuminating journal entries late into production. The journey of this very process further instantiates that the two appear to be living parallel lives.
The effectiveness of the documentary lies not just in the emotional nature of remembrance, but also in the self-actualizing quality of Seed’s narrative, as a search for her mother, and by extension, herself. To say that Sheila would feel so very proud of her daughter, in this project, is as true an assumption as such could ever be. But just as important as Sheila’s records and writings are to her legacy, is her daughter’s interpretation of these physical manifestations of memory. The philosophies of photography that Sheila Turner Seed pursued in her own work through interviews and application carry on in her daughter. In her closing words of A Photographic Memory, Rachel Elizabeth Seed muses, “Is a photograph actually a record of something, or is it meaningless without our interpretation of it?”
Along with these documentary highlights, Full Frame also pays respects to two key figures this year. A special remembrance was held for documentarian Nancy Buirski, who founded Full Frame as the DoubleTake Documentary Festival in 1998. Buirski’s unexpected passing last year is honored by a written tribute and special screening of her films The Loving Story (2011), Afternoon of a Faun: Tranquil Le Clerq (2014), and Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy (2022). Documentarian D.A. Pennebaker is also paid tribute to in the festival program, with featured screenings of Daybreak Express (1953) and Don’t Look Back (1967), in addition to two selects co-directed with his partner Chris Hegedus: Town Bloody Hall (1979) and The War Room (1993).
Pennebaker’s memorial tribute had initially been planned for the 2020 festival, but the pandemic had delayed this until now. The passing of Buirski is doubly saddening, and her prepared speech for Pennebaker from 2020, now included in this year’s programming, unknowingly pays tribute to herself, as well. In this, Buirski speaks of Pennebaker’s frequent visits to Full Frame over the years. She highlights his attention, presence, and geniality toward students, programmers, visiting filmmakers, and many others. His foundational work with the festival, from the early days of DoubleTake, continues today, as we honor this annual attendee, ground-breaking filmmaker, and acolyte of documentarian filmmaking. To close with a quote from Buirksi: “Penny, was, at the end of the day, about ideas; indeed, his head often seemed dangerously in the clouds—one followed his rambles not being sure where one was being led, until it became startlingly apparent, often even life-changing.”
M. Sellers Johnson is an independent scholar and editor whose research interests include French art cinema, transnationalism, historiography, and aesthetics. He received his MA from Te Herenga Waka (Victoria University of Wellington) in 2021 and his BA at the University of North Carolina Wilmington in 2018. His work has appeared in Afterimage, Film International, Film Quarterly, Media Peripheries, Mise-en-scène, Offscreen, and sabah ülkesi, among other outlets. He is the founding Citation Ethics Editor for Film Matters, and the current Book Reviews Editor for New Review of Film and Television Studies.