Full Force Filmmaking

This past weekend marked the ninth annual Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham, N.C. A whopping 72 films competed in the event, ranging in subject matter from the war on Iraq to air guitar. There were an impressive 13 films in a category called Class in America, curated by St. Clair Bourne, aiming to "paint a more accurate picture that can be useful to politically active citizens who are trying to make the U.S. government more democratic (that is, small "d") in practice." (What that means, exactly, we're not entirely sure.)

The festival also highlighted Katrina-centered docs (a subject the networks, if not the American people, seem to have tired of) in its Southern Sidebar feature. Of course, we also enjoyed lots of panels, parties, ceremonies, free man-purses and free food. The most resonant panel was the New York Times-led Class Symposium, moderated by Tom Kuntz, editor of the newspaper's "Class Matters" series from a few years back. The panel included a host of filmmakers, academics and journalists who offered a rich discussion on the tangled intersections of race, class and gender, with director Linda Goode Bryant ("Flag Wars") raising the most evocative questions about who defines "self-interest," and according to whose moral or economic criteria.

The missionary impulses behind much documentary-making -- relatively privileged filmmakers representing the lives of those less fortunate -- also got interesting play. Still, we didn't fail to notice the general homogeneity of the audience at Full Frame, many of whom had plenty to say during Q&A sessions, but surprisingly little to ask. Instead, many folks seemed intent on flashing their progressive credentials with disclosures about the "importance" of their own work.

Still, the urge to show one's liberal colors is understandable -- if not imperative -- in these ominously conservative times. But the challenge remains: How can we reach beyond the hermetic havens of festivals like Full Frame, and into the mainstream?

Linda Goode Bryant argued that we should start by aiming to resist labels like "haves" and "have-nots," because different communities frame those words differently -- as beautifully illustrated in her film "Flag Wars" (a Full Frame award-winner in 2003, and rescreened at this year's festival). So was "Flag Wars," as provocative and compelling as Bryant herself? Yep; the doc held an insightful lens to a relatively privileged -- but marginalized -- gay community in Columbus, Ohio, as it gentrified an old African-American neighborhood.

Cinematic Highlights

Next time you find yourself mindlessly mumbling along with 50 Cent, consider checking out Byron Hurt's "Beyond Beats and Rhymes: A Hip-Hop Head Weighs In On Manhood In Hip-Hop Culture." It's an insider's exploration of the forces conspiring to produce legions of gun-toting wannabe pimps and gangstas. An ex-college quarterback, Hurt interviews rappers from Chuck D to Busta Rhymes to Jadakiss to Fat Joe.

Micah X. Peled's moving "China Blue" was inspiring in a different way. We headed to the American Tobacco Campus to watch the story of Jasmine, a 16-year-old from China's Sichuan province migrating to the manufacturing city of Shaxi, where she finds a cushy entry-level sweatshop job cutting loose threads from Westerners' jeans for 6 cents an hour. It's everything we already know about sweatshop labor but prefer not to think about: slave-like working conditions, interminable hours without overtime, cut-throat global competition But the sweetness of Jasmine's friendships, her basic human longings for family and a better life -- not to mention her diary musings about attaining kung fu powers and turning abusive factory managers into stone -- made the film surprisingly intimate. Toward the end of the film, Jasmine ponders why the people she's making the jeans for are so fat, and she smuggles a letter to them into a pair of jeans. So check your pockets and check your heads.