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Toasts all ’round – Full Frame Film Festival

April 7, 2010 BY Molly Murphy

“Good work!” to our colleagues at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival

The Festival kicks off this Thursday, April 8, with a stellar and rousing line up. We’re connected to a number of films and filmmakers at the fest; join us in celebrating their success!

On Friday, April 9th at 4pm, at the Carolina Theatre’s historic Fletcher Hall is the Center for Investigative Reporting’s Dirty Business. Dirty Business demystifies “clean coal” and explores the extent to which increased energy efficiency and wind, solar and thermal power might make “clean coal” unnecessary and uneconomical. Join the filmmakers Peter Bull and Justin Weinstein and some local folks from NC Interfaith Power & Light and Duke Environmental Alliance afterward for the Q&A. Working Films is currently developing Dirty Business’ audience engagement and hosting a strategy meeting later this month with national NGOs.

Two other films for which we will be hosting strategy summits will be at Full Frame: Stanley Nelson’s Freedom Riders and Stonewall Uprising by Kate Davis and David Heilbroner.  Both projects will also be featured on the PBS series American Experience.

Freedom Riders is the inspirational story of eight months in 1961 when more than 400 black and white Americans risked their lives in protest against Jim Crow laws. It screens at Cinema 3, Sunday, April 11 at 4:10 pm.

Stonewall Uprising , an essential history of gay rights in America, centers on June 27, 1969, the night that patrons of Greenwich Village’s Stonewall Inn refused to be rounded up and shamed in a series of unjust arrests. It screens on Saturday, April 10, 4:30 pm, Cinema Four.

Moxie Firecracker Films’ Rory Kennedy and Liz Garbus will be honored with 2010 Full Frame Career Award. A roster of their amazing films runs thru the weekend. Some of our best community engagement campaigns have been with this smart and committed team, including Ghosts of Abu Ghraib and Coma.

Full Frame honors first time filmmakers with the Garrett Scott Documentary Development Grant. This grant funds novice documentary makers for travel to the festival and accommodations, providing them access to films, participation in master classes and mentorships by experienced filmmakers. This year the award goes to Mike Brown (25 to Life) and April Hayes and Katia Maguire (Jessica Gonzales vs. The United States of America). Mike participated in the 2009 Good Pitch at IFP – campaign development for Good Pitch filmmakers is provided by Working Films.

The late Garrett Scott was a friend and a colleague who is sorely missed; Working Films supported the engagement campaign for Occupation: Dreamland, the award-winning film Garrett co-directed with Ian Olds.

Stay over Sunday for our co-founder Judith Helfand’s very first film The Uprising of ’34, co-directed with George Stoney, screening April 11, 1:40 pm at DAC / PSI Theatre. The film probes the working conditions that led to the strike of hundreds of thousands of Southern cotton mill workers, the events of the strike itself, and the violence and intimidation whose lasting legacy could be felt even 70 years later.

The Festival is shaping up to be a great time. We hope to see you at some or all of these events!

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