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Elvis meets Nixon in The King and Dick

Elvis meets Nixon in The King and Dick, one of the top shorts at the 2004 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival.

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BestFilmFests.com

Full Frame Documentary Fest

by Allan Maurer

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This year's themes included political documentaries, southern politicians, hybrid mixes of fact and fiction, and a number of World Premieres, including the upcoming HBO documentary on Elaine Stritch's Tony-winning Broadway show, Elaine Stritch at Liberty.

Other high points were Ken Burn's work-in-progress, Unforgiveable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson, a biography of the first black world heavyweight boxing champion, and the much anticipated Super Size Me, Morgan Spurlock's doc about eating only at McDonald's for a month and the dire results that had on his body.

Unplanned sub-themes often emerge from Full Frame's selection of films in competition as well as those it slots into special programming. This year, Burn's first two parts of the Johnson biography and a cut of The Fight, the upcoming American Experience film about the Joe Louis vs. Max Schmelling fights, did so.

Both films illustrate how heavyweight championship bouts between black and white fighters in the first half of the 20th century twice became contests symbolic of much larger issues. Johnson's success mocked white racism and inspired a fruitless search for a "Great White Hope," while Louis became a symbol of democracy vs. the Nazis in his two battles against Max Schmelling.

If you threw in any of the documentaries about Muhammad Ali, it would highlight the remarkable way America and the world invested boxing matches with enormous political and social significance in the 20th century.

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