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SDF Sponsored Films @ Full Frame 2013

Four SDF sponsored films are screening at this year's festival, including two feature length documentaries, and two works in progress. We're also hosting our annual SDF Friday Happy Hour @ Full Frame, and new this year, an SDF benefit at Mateo before our In the Works screening on Sunday. Come out to see these Southern made films, and get to know our community of artists and supporters.

Good Ol' Freda by Ryan White
2:00pm Friday, April 5th, Fletcher Hall
Seventeen-year-old Liverpudlian Freda Kelly was an ordinary girl who worked in an office typing pool and spent her off-hours hanging out at the Cavern-which she describes as smelling like disinfectant (the toilets overflowed), rotten fruit (it was near a wholesaler), and sweat-and listening to bands. She especially loved the Beatles. In 1963, Brian Epstein, the Beatles' manager, chose her to work as the Beatles' personal secretary and to run their fan club because she took the fans seriously and kept the band's secrets with absolute integrity. Freda never wrote a book or did interviews after the Fab Four broke up, and she has lived a modest life with the same down-to-earth sincerity with which she performed the world's greatest job. In Good Ol' Freda she tells "one of the last true stories of the Beatles you'll ever hear." (The film's soundtrack includes four vintage Beatles recordings.) Filmmaker Q&A following screening.

In So Many Words by Elisabeth Haviland James
5:10pm Sunday, April 7th, Cinema 4
This intensely revealing biography of writer and clinical psychologist Lucy Daniels expands the documentary form in its freely evocative visualization of Daniels's early life. Recreated scenes bring a dreamy visual texture to a story told in dark, powerful interviews. Daniels's access to her earliest memories, in vivid detail, suggests the redemptive possibilities of years of therapy. Raised in a wealthy newspaper family in North Carolina, Daniels lived in a bubble of privilege and family dysfunction, which led to an intractable case of anorexia. During her teens, she was confined to various institutions to treat her illness and, along with other methods, was given electroshock treatments. Surprisingly, her highly acclaimed novels Caleb, My Son, and High on a Hill followed the medieval horrors of these years and were written and published when she was still her twenties. Psychoanalysis meets cinematography in this formally creative and emotionally compelling film. Filmmaker Q&A following screening.

SDF's In the Works @ Durham Arts Council
1:40p Sunday, April 7th, PSI Theater
This year we are screening in-the-works excerpts from Occupy the Imagination by Rodrigo Dorfman and So Help You God by Ashley York. In Occupy the Imagination filmmaker Rodrigo Dorfman explores his revolutionary roots in 1970s Chile as a wave of resistance explodes during Occupy Wall Street. In So Help You God, filmmaker Ashley York returns to her Kentucky hometown to unravel the story of six teenagers imprisoned for a gruesome murder. The showings will be followed by audience responses and conversations with the filmmakers, moderated by Frank Stasio of WUNC's The State of Things.

SDF Happy Hour @ Art/Revere La Noue
4:00 - 6:30pm Friday, April 5th, 308 W. Main Street (formerly called The Mascot Gallery)
It's a tradition! On the Friday of Full Frame, SDF hosts a happy hour for our Full Frame friends, our sponsored artists, visiting filmmakers, and supporters. We'll have Fullsteam beer on tap, popcorn and sweets, and lots of conversation about documentaries and more. Come have a drink on us and hear about our amazing slate of sponsored projects, our filmmaker services, and programming. See you there!  
Many thanks to our wonderful donors for supporting this event:  The Cupcake Bar,  Fullsteam Brewery, The Mad Popper, and Whole Foods Durham.

SDF March Mixer

Join us for our next SDF Mixer, "Still Image to Scene." These days more and more still photographers find themselves shooting moving images. SDF project directors Derek Anderson, Jason Arthurs, and Ted Richardson will talk about both the challenges and opportunities they've faced as they've transitioned from capturing still images to making documentary films. We welcome filmmakers and photographers alike for refreshments and a lively discussion.

Fresh Docs is back!

The Southern Documentary Fund and the Center for Documentary Studies are relaunching the works-in-progress series Fresh Docs, which features documentaries straight out of the edit suite. The idea is to watch these not-quite-finished films as a community and provide constructive feedback to the filmmakers.

This month we'll be screening Deep Run Roots, an authentically southern television series still in production. Veteran documentary filmmaker Cynthia Hill takes us behind the scenes at a highbrow restaurant struggling to make it in one of the most economically depressed places in the country.

Chef Vivian Howard was making a name for herself in the New York City restaurant world when her father, a hog farmer in eastern North Carolina, made her an offer she couldn't refuse-to build and run her very own restaurant. The only catch was that the restaurant had to be in her hometown of Kinston, North Carolina, a place that she swore never return to. Six years in, Vivian and her restaurant, Chef and the Farmer, have won numerous accolades (including semifinalist for a James Beard Foundation Award) but the challenges continue. As the TV series opens, Vivian and her husband, Ben, are juggling the business with parenting their twins, and a fire has destroyed the restaurant's kitchen. What happens next is a true testament to what local cooking and eating really mean.

If you have a project you'd like to show at Fresh Docs let us know! We're seeking submissions for screenings this Spring.

In-the-Works Session at Full Frame- Call for Submissions!

The Southern Documentary Fund is proud to announce that we will again be programming the In-the-Works Session at the 2013 Full Frame Documentary Film Festivalin Durham, NC. The festival is April 4-7, with SDF's In-the-Works Session tentatively scheduled for Sunday, April 7th.

SDF's In-the-Works program offers an unusual opportunity for professionals and non-professionals to view documentaries at various stages of production and participate in the critique process. The audience is encouraged to give constructive feedback about the structure, content, characters and clarity of the film in a post-screening discussion that will be facilitated by a moderator.

Submissions must comply with the following guidelines: Must be a documentary film
Must be made in or about the American South
Must be in the final stages of completion
Filmmakers must be present at the screening

What do we mean by "In-the-Works?" We are NOT looking for rough selects, audio gaps, unstructured storyline, etc. Your submission doesn't need to be mixed and color corrected but should feel like a film with a story. We should be able to have a really good idea of where your film is going. There are no length requirements but we tend to screen features. In other words, submit your best cut!

We'll select anywhere from 1 to 3 projects to feature, and may screen only a portion of the works. For consideration, please submit your project to the Southern Documentary Fund no later than February 13, 2013 (received by).

How to Submit: Online- (preferred) Upload your cut to Vimeo or YouTube and send us the link and password. or...DVD- You may submit 2 DVD copies of the film. Send submission to: Southern Documentary Fund 762 Ninth St. # 574 Durham, NC 27705 Attn: Jenn Cromling

All submissions must include contact information and a short description of the work. If your film is selected we will ask for additional materials including publicity photos, one paragraph description, credits, etc.

Upcoming New Projects Application Deadline

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