Since the ‘fair use’ issue has been shut out of FullFrame (April 6-9 in Durham NC), I have to admit I’ve been pouting a bit. In addition to the fact that besides us, the Duke Law people and others, are doing some very cool stuff to help makers deal with intellectual property issues. It seems bizarre that FullFrame totally snubbed all of us…I also just really wanted to go. But today I got a message that one of the docs that inspired me to get into this line of work is screening there, and I really want to mention it - Stranger with a Camera by Elizabeth Barret is part of St. Claire Borne’s programmed sidebar Class in America.

If you haven’t seen it, I can’t recommend it highly enough. Barret, who herself grew up in Appalachia, explores the killing of a filmmaker that happened during a time when lots of reporters and filmmakers where trekking into that part of the world to, supposedly, expose the poverty that existed there. The media attention was an unwelcome presence when it became clear that the coverage was largely tilting toward sensational (there is also a Katrina sidebar - lots of fodder for discussion). The situation came to a head when a local killed a filmmaker. Barret delves beautifully into the relationship between filmmaker and subject, class in America, and the uneasy coexistance of issues and media coverage. It inspired me not only because of how beautifully crafted the film is along with Barret’s intelligent and thought-provoking narration, but because I realized then that filmmaking, and documentary in particular, has some role to play in what we know about the world beyond our own doors and maybe even in what we do with that information.

Some other films I’d recommend seeing are:

• 51 Birch Street by Doug Block
• a/k/a Tommy Chong by Josh Gilbert
• Arctic Son by Andrew Walton
• Asparagus: A Stalk-umentary by Anne de Mare and Kirsten Kelly
• Beyond Beats and Rhymes by Byron Hurt
• China Blue by Micha X. Peled
• Maxed Out by James Scurlock
• Our Daily Bread by Nikolaus Geyrhalter
• The Last Pullman Car by Gordon Quinn and Jerry Blumenthal
• Recalling Orange County by Mylène Moreno

Have fun if you go, and send me your best and worst list!