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Documentaries a big attraction

Truth isn't just stranger than fiction - at the Philadelphia Film Festival, it's usually better than fiction. "When you look at how the overall festival audience rates the top movies, of the top 15 movies in any given year, you'll see 10 or 12 that are documentaries," said Ray Murray, director of the festival, which commences its 17th year tomorrow.

Truth isn't just stranger than fiction - at the Philadelphia Film Festival, it's usually better than fiction.

"When you look at how the overall festival audience rates the top movies, of the top 15 movies in any given year, you'll see 10 or 12 that are documentaries," said Ray Murray, director of the festival, which commences its 17th year tomorrow.

"It's kind of the opposite of the way things work in the commercial world, where documentaries are a hard sell," Murray said. "With the festival, they're always among the most popular, in terms of attendance and how audiences rate them."

This year the festival has decided to yield to audience taste by offering twice the usual number of non-fiction works.

"It's not a strategy, really. It was just kind of a good year for documentaries. Instead of putting some kind of artificial cap on the number we show - it's usually 15 or 20 - we just decided if they were better than some of the dramatic films we were considering, we'd book them," he said.

The festival opens tomorrow night with "Young At Heart," a documentary about a choir for the elderly that sings everything from pop to punk. It closes with "Traces of the Trade," a documentary by Philadelphia native Katrina Browne, about her discovering that some of her New England relatives were active in the slave trade centuries ago.

In between are a slew of non-fiction titles, including Dan Stephenson's "Richie Ashburn: A Baseball Life," and biographies of rocker Patti Smith, filmmaker William Castle, and a company history of Pixar, the groundbreaking animation studio now owned by Disney.

The festival runs April 3 through April 16, and offers more than 250 titles representing some 40 countries. It includes the usual mix of what Murray describes as crowd-pleasing "pop" titles from around the world - movies that were hits in their country of origin - and darker and more risque fare, under the banner of the festival's popular "Danger After Dark" slate.

Murray and his staff have tried to make the festival more audience-friendly since taking control eight years ago, when attendance was languishing under 20,000. Admissions climbed steadily in the years since - last year they hit 68,000 and Murray expects things to be slightly better this year, given the brisk pace of advance sales (all information regarding pricing, schedules and availability can be found at www.phillyfests.

com).

The festival likes to stick with programming that works. Music-theme movies scored with audiences two years ago, so the festival repeated the approach in '08 - in part because it allows Murray to bring in musical acts that help the festival's goal to expand the cultural reach and impact of the event.

Boosting attendance numbers has been key to raising the festival's profile, Murray said, allowing it to leverage better titles and better talent.

This year, the guest of honor is John Leguizamo, star of M. Night Shyamalan's upcoming "The Happening," whose independent heist film "The Take" is part of the program. He'll receive the fest's artistic achievement award April 10. Shane West gets the Rising Star award April 12, and will present his "What We Do Is Secret."

Frank Henenlotter gets the Phantasmagoria Award on Friday, preceding a screening of "Bad Biology."

As always, the festival provides a theatrical outlet for local filmmakers through its Festival of Independents, which runs within the larger festival. *