Blog From The Bench

Last year, the line went out the door and around the block as thousands of expectant patrons tussled over the scant seating for "An Evening with Michael Moore." Moore was discussing his new documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, a film that was already generating some heat among the select group of festival goers who had witnessed its world premiere. As we know, the film generated some heat in the rest of the world shortly thereafter.

If you're going to be near Durham, North Carolina within the next four days, you should stop by the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival and take in a film. There's no telling which documentary will touch a nerve this year. For the last couple of months, I've been among the volunteers who have been working to make the festival happen. The day is upon us, and we're all pretty excited. If you want to be ahead of the curve on this year's 9/11 or Supersize Me!, this is the place to be.

Full Frame will screen ~77 new documentaries as Films in Competition for awards. We'll host nearly 150 filmmakers, from Martin Scorsese, Ken Burns, Barbara Kopple, and Ric Burns to local filmmakers to an exchange group of documentarians from Turkey. Pile on a handful of parties, panel discussions, screenings of films not in competition, and special events such as "An Evening with Martin Scorsese" and "An Evening with Ken Burns and Ric Burns: The 2005 Full Frame Career Awards" ...it gets interesting.

I'll post more about this beast as the week progresses; I'll be working the Filmmaker Party and Filmmaker Lounge, so who knows what interesting things might come to pass. I hope to see some Verdict readers at the festival: I'll be the guy in the purple "Volunteer" shirt and ponytail.