Titled “In Process: Documenting Creativity,” award-winning filmmakers Jessica Edwards and Gary Hustwit has curated the 2024 Thematic Program of the 26th annual Full Frame Documentary Film Festival taking place April 4–7, 2024

The 2024 Thematic Program examines the creative process through films that illuminate how artists—on both sides of the lens and across a variety of mediums—make their work. The series features six selections, four features and two shorts, and considers both the triumphs and the uncertainties involved in producing art and transforming personal experience into public expression.

“Full Frame has always been one of our favorite festivals, so when Sadie asked us to curate the Thematic Program, we were thrilled,” said Jessica Edwards and Gary Hustwit. “We’re both obsessed with the creative process, and we’re excited to share films that take a unique approach to documenting artists and their work. We hope Full Frame audiences will find as much inspiration in these films as we do.”

Edwards and Hustwit were originally invited to curate the Thematic Program for the 2020 festival, before the in-person event was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Thematic Program was postponed until the curated lineup could be presented in person.

“I’m excited to finally have this opportunity to showcase Gary and Jessica’s series exploring the creative process,” said co-festival director and artistic director Sadie Tillery. “As filmmakers, they’ve brought the creative acts of an incredible range of artists, from Mavis Staples to Dieter Rams, into view. They have a way of finding the spark in the creator’s eye—their films share the magic, and the gravity, artists experience in making something new and putting themselves out there.”

In addition to the Thematic Program selections, Full Frame will screen Eno, directed by Hustwit, and produced by Hustwit and Edwards, in the 2024 Invited Program. In Eno, visionary musician and artist Brian Eno—known for producing David Bowie, U2, Talking Heads, among many others; pioneering the genre of ambient music; and releasing over 40 solo and collaboration albums—reveals his creative processes in a groundbreaking generative documentary: a film that’s different every time it’s shown.

Named one of “10 Documakers to Watch” by Variety, Edwards is the founder of the independent production company Film First, which creates films that examine music, design, technology, and humanity. Directing credits include Seltzer Works (2010), which premiered at SXSW and was broadcast on PBS’s influential POV program, Tugs (2011), The Landfill (2012), and Slowerblack (2017). Her debut feature, Mavis! (2015), premiered on HBO and earned her a Peabody for distinguished achievement in documentary filmmaking. Her most recent documentary feature, Skate Dreams (2022) premiered at SXSW and screened at Full Frame. In 2013, Edwards published the bestselling book “Tell Me Something: Documentary Filmmakers,” featuring luminaries like Barbara Kopple, Albert Maysles, D A Pennebaker, and Martin Scorsese.

Hustwit made his directorial debut with Helvetica (2007), which was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and marked the beginning of a design film trilogy that includes Objectified (2009) and Urbanized (2011). Most recently, he directed Eno (2024), about musician and artist Brian Eno, and Rams (2018), about German design legend Dieter Rams. His films have screened at the Sundance Film Festival, SXSW, and the Toronto International Film Festival, among others, and many have been broadcast on Netflix, HBO, PBS, and the BBC. He is a member of the Documentary Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Prior to directing, Hustwit worked with punk label SST Records, ran the independent book publishing house Incommunicado Press, and started the indie DVD label Plexifilm. He recently launched Anamorph, a software company exploring the uses of generative technology in cinema.

Past curators of Full Frame’s Thematic Program include RaMell Ross, Amir Bar-Lev, Jennifer Baichwal, Steve James, Lucy Walker, Chris Hegedus, and D A Pennebaker. Specific screening times and venues will be announced with the release of the full schedule later this month.

The 26th annual Full Frame Documentary Film Festival runs April 4–7, 2024.

2024 Thematic Program
In Process: Documenting Creativity

A Bigger Splash / United States (Director: Jack Hazan)
Jack Hazan’s intimate and innovative film about English-born, often California-based artist David Hockney and his work honors its subject through creative risk-taking. The improvisatory narrative-nonfiction hybrid features Hockney—a wary participant—as well as his circle of friends, and captures the agonized end of the lingering affair between Hockney and his muse, an American named Peter Schlesinger.

Christo’s Valley Curtain / United States (Directors: Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Ellen Giffard)
Christo’s Valley Curtain celebrates the Bulgarian-born artist’s dramatic hanging of a huge orange curtain between two Colorado mountains. Since the late 1950’s, Christo’s large-scale temporary works of art have helped change our perception of art and society.

Mur Murs / France, United States (Director: Agnès Varda)
After returning to Los Angeles from France in 1979, Agnès Varda created this kaleidoscopic documentary about the striking murals that decorate the city. Bursting with color and vitality, Mur Murs is as much an invigorating study of community and diversity as it is an essential catalog of unusual public art.

A Poem Is a Naked Person / United States (Director: Les Blank)
Les Blank considered this free-form feature documentary about beloved singer-songwriter Leon Russell, filmed between 1972 and 1974, to be one of his greatest accomplishments. Hired by Russell to film him at his recording studio in northeast Oklahoma, Blank ended up constructing a unique, intimate portrait of a musician and his environment.

The Poot / Iran (Director: Elham Asadi)
The Poot serves as a beautifully crafted tribute to the ancient Iranian tradition of carpet weaving, documenting the detail and precision that goes into each hand-loomed creation.

Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One / United States (Director: William Greaves)
Director William Greaves presides over a beleaguered film crew in New York’s Central Park, leaving them to try to figure out what kind of movie they’re making. A couple enacts a break-up scenario over and over, a documentary crew films a crew filming the crew, locals wander casually into the frame: the project defies easy description. Yet this wildly innovative sixties counterculture landmark remains one of the most tightly focused and insightful movies ever made about making movies.