As recently announced on the latest episode of MovieChatter, I am going to be covering the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham, North Carolina this weekend. Full Frame is one of the premier film festivals in the country, and showcases documentaries from all over the world. Many of the films have recently won awards at places like Sundance, while others have their world premiere at Full Frame and go on to receive international media attention. It is not unusual for films shown at Full Frame to go on to win Academy Awards, like last year’s Man on Wire.

And yet, too often, documentaries are an overlooked genre. The vast majority of them do not receive a major theatrical release. Though they’re growing in popularity, most people have probably only seen a handful of documentaries in their lifetime, if any. Most of the time documentaries are stereotyped as Michael Moore-style agenda pieces, or as boring “non-fiction” works that don’t allow viewers to “escape.” Yet usually this is hardly the case.

Here are 5 reasons not only to tune into our Full Frame coverage this weekend, but to give documentaries in general a chance:

1) Truth is often stranger and more interesting than fiction. A man who tightrope walked between the Twin Towers. A democratic election for class monitor in a third-grade classroom in communist China. A taxi driver who’s wrongfully kidnapped and placed in Guantanamo Bay. These are not narrative fiction films. They are documentaries, and these individuals and situations actually occurred. Which sounds like a more entertaining film: the formulaic kids’ movie about a talking bear, or one about a real-life person who lives with the grizzlies? Documentaries can be just as “escapist” as narrative feature films!

2) Documentaries aren’t just “educational specials” like Planet Earth or “agenda films” like Fahrenheit 9/11. There are comedic documentaries (Please Vote For Me), dramatic documentaries (A Lion in the House), family-friendly documentaries (March of the Penguins), cultural documentaries (Up the Yangtze), and issue-driven documentaries (Lake of Fire). There is a documentary to fit whatever mood you’re in.

3) Moreso than perhaps any other genre, documentaries provoke discussion. How often do you wind up in a deep discussion about real-life issues after seeing the latest romantic comedy or action film? Not only do documentaries entertainment, but they frequently educate and enlighten. They challenge our social and cultural assumptions about issues and problems, and force us to come to terms with our own biases and prejudices. You aren’t likely to find a feature film that takes a long, detailed look at real life-issues like terrorism, the economic crisis, poverty, love, artistry, family values, religious beliefs, etc. If there’s any genre of film that has the potential to change public policy and values, it’s documentary.

4) We’ll be giving you the scoop before anyone else does. Many of the other big film-related podcasts are centralized around the West Coast, and don’t make it to film festivals like Full Frame. MovieChatter will be one of the few podcasts present at the festival, bringing you reviews and impressions of a wide variety of films months before they’re even released! We’ll let you know which films should be on your radar. Not only that, but we might also get the chance to sit down with some of the filmmakers behind this year’s selection of films, and fill you in on behind-the-scenes info you won’t get anywhere else.

5) Movies, movies, movies! If you listen to MovieChatter, then chances are you like movies. And if you like movies, there’s nothing quite like a festival dedicated entirely to showcasing some of the best. We’ll be flooding the website with reviews and info on what’s sure to be some of the year’s most talked-about films.

Here’s how it will work. My brother James and I will be covering the festival on behalf of MovieChatter. Between us, we’re currently scheduled to see more than 20 films. Some of them are feature-length, others of them are shorter. Whenever we have time between screenings, we plan on recording brief reviews of what we’ve seen. These reviews will be fairly short, and will not contain spoilers. That way you can hear us give our general impressions and figure out whether or not these are films you might potentially want to see once they’re released, without having them spoiled for you.

Whenever there’s time, I will upload each of these reviews to the website. They will not go into the iTunes feed. So if you want the most up-to-date coverage from the festival, you’ll want to keep checking back here, or follow us on Twitter to receive an automatic notice of when a new review is posted.

Each day, some of these reviews, but maybe not all of them, will be compiled into a longer “digest” episode that will go into the iTunes feed. The goal is that every day subscribers who don’t check the website will be able to here a compilation of some of the highlights from the previous day of the festivals. But again, the only way you’ll be able to listen to and download every individual review as soon as we post them will be to check the website. It would be nice to post them all into the iTunes feed, but that might be a bit overwhelming, and it’s possible you won’t want to hear about every single film.

If you have any questions regarding our coverage of the festival, don’t hesitate to comment here on the site or drop us an email. Now sit back, relax, and let’s enjoy Full Frame!