Nancy Buirski and D. A. Pennebaker will be celebrated with the 2024 Full Frame Tribute

The Full Frame Documentary Film Festival will celebrate filmmakers Nancy Buirski, who also founded the festival, and D. A. Pennebaker with the 2024 Full Frame Tribute. 

“Remembering Nancy and Penny, I cannot think of two people who are more responsible for shaping Full Frame as a cultural institution,” said co-festival director and artistic director Sadie Tillery. “Over the years, they shared their films, their passion for the craft of filmmaking, their knowledge of the documentary form, and their profound desire to hold space for meaningful dialogue and connection. Full Frame would not be Full Frame without them, and it means the world to me to highlight their invaluable contributions this year.” 

Full Frame will screen a selection of Buirski’s and Pennebaker’s films at the four-day festival. An event where friends, colleagues, and fellow filmmakers remember Buirski’s visionary artistry will take place in Fletcher Hall. The festival will also a feature a panel conversation around Pennebaker’s legacy as a pioneer of cinéma vérité and a mentor to numerous filmmakers. 

Read the press here.

2024 Full Frame Tribute
Nancy Buirski

Afternoon of a Faun: Tanaquil Le Clercq / United States (Director: Nancy Buirski)
Tanaquil Le Clercq inspired choreographers unlike any ballerina before her, but in 1956, at the height of her fame, she was stricken with polio. A mesmerizing film of love, loss, and surprising grace.

Desperate Souls, Dark City, and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy / United States (Director: Nancy Buirski)
Inspired by Glenn Frankel’s 2021 book Shooting Midnight Cowboy: Art, Sex, Loneliness, Liberation, and the Making of a Dark Classic, Nancy Buirski’s documentary explores the groundbreaking movie, but her attention is trained on the people who made it and the times in which it was made.

The Loving Story / United States (Director: Nancy Buirski)
The Loving Story tells the dramatic story of Richard and Mildred Loving, an interracial couple living in Virginia in the 1950s, and their landmark Supreme Court Case, Loving v. Virginia, that changed history.

2024 Full Frame Tribute
D. A. Pennebaker

Daybreak Express / United States (Director: D. A. Pennebaker)
Shot in 1953, though not completed until 1957, Daybreak Express was the first film D. A. Pennebaker made, a mad rush of images of New York City captured from a train and edited to the rhythm of Duke Ellington’s song of the same name. A jazz aficionado, Pennebaker thought his career would continue along this path, making short films cut to songs.

Dont Look Back / United States (Director: D. A. Pennebaker)
Bob Dylan is captured on-screen as he never would be again in this groundbreaking film from D. A. Pennebaker. The legendary documentarian finds Dylan in England during his 1965 tour, which would be his last as an acoustic artist. In this wildly entertaining vision of one of the twentieth century’s greatest artists, Dylan is surrounded by teen fans, gets into heated philosophical jousts with journalists, and kicks back with fellow musicians Joan Baez, Donovan, and Alan Price.

Town Bloody Hall / United States (Directors: Chris Hegedus, D. A. Pennebaker)
On April 30, 1971, a standing-room-only crowd of New York’s intellectual elite packed the city’s Town Hall theater to see Norman Mailer—fresh from the controversy over his essay “The Prisoner of Sex” and the backlash it received from leaders of the women’s movement—tangle with a panel of four prominent female thinkers and activists: Jacqueline Ceballos, Germaine Greer, Jill Johnston, and Diana Trilling. 

The War Room / United States (Directors: Chris Hegedus, D. A. Pennebaker)
The 1992 presidential election was a triumph not only for Bill Clinton but also for the new breed of strategists who guided him to the White House—and changed the face of politics in the process. For this thrilling, behind-closed-doors account of that campaign, renowned cinema verité filmmakers Chris Hegedus and D. A. Pennebaker captured the brainstorming and bull sessions of Clinton’s crack team of consultants—especially James Carville and George Stephanopoulos, who became media stars in their own right as they injected a savvy, youthful spirit and spontaneity into the process of campaigning.

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