The Circuit

Hot Docs has partnered with both the Calgary and Whistler film fests.  The fest will bring its popular Doc Soup screening series to the events in the fall. 

Launched in 2001, the monthly Doc Soup has preemed "Capturing the Friedmans," "No End in Sight," and "Jesus Camp" (pictured) to Toronto auds.  Sean Farnel will program the series.

Gigantic Releasing has picked up all North American and English-speaking territories to Morgan Dews' debut docu, "Must Read After My Death" ahead of its U.S. preem at the Los Angeles Film Festival.  The film premiered at Hot Docs.

Docu chronicles the life of troubled family during the turbulent '60s and is based on the home recordings, snapshots and transcripts of the filmmaker's grandmother. Gigantic will release the film at the end of 2008.

“With Morgan Dews’s stunning film debut, we are discovering a new director with an artist’s eye and the power of a great story-teller," said Mark Lipsky, Gigantic's president. "He has taken the unique and stirring details of his own family and turned it into a tale that speaks to the trials of family life everywhere.”

Check out the trailer:

photos and text by Ray Pride


Just as "eh" and "oot and aboot" can mark a Canuck, Torontonians note U.S. citizens by their insistence on calling the city's tallest landmark the "CNN Tower," rather than the "CN Tower."


Bill Evans headed Winnipeg's late, lamented FilmExchange All-Canada festival; now he's Director of Programming for December's Whistler Film Festival.


Toronto-based doc filmmaker Stuart Samuels was co-director and producer of "Visions Of Light," the most comprehensive feature look at the art of cinematography. Samuel's latest nonfiction pic about the hopes of the 1960s, "27," is named for the age Hendrix, Joplin and Jim Morrison where when they died, and is a likely Toronto International preem in September.


Arto Halonen, recently feted in Thessaloniki with a career nod, is a Finnish docmaker whose doc about surreal doings in Turkmenistan and corporations that kowtowed to the oil-and-gas-rich dictatorship, "Shadow of The Holy Book" is making the circuit; coming soon to Seattle. At the Canadian Filmmakers party.


Ray Pride is a contributing editor of Movie City News and Filmmaker and movie critic of the Chicago weekly Newcity as well as a photographer. He observes independent film at Movie City Indie; links to his work are at his own site.

photos and text by Ray Pride


The ROM (Royal Ontario Museum), with its controversial 2007 "Crystal" addition jutting out of the 1912 edifice, hosted some screenings and several receptions. Street level views are striking, as is this one from the rooftop bar of the Park Hyatt, a popular dusk destination.

HBO-Cinemax President of Documentary and Family Programming Sheila Nevins talked for an hour with Hot Docs director of Programming Sean Farnel about her passions and the philosophy of the company's essentially hands-off commitment to documentary. She described the work as "nudging the world" despite "business dot dot dot."

"I wouldn't say rare or rarefied or elitist but I wouldn't say popular like a TV show or popular like filling a movie theater. It's an exciting form; it doesn’t have to be popular. It's for people who care about the universe and about change. It's not pup culture. It has to make you tingle in some way, if it's an HBO docu. You ask what's an HBO documentary, it's like asking, 'what is love?'"

Do they nurture filmmakers?

"I wouldn't say nurture. If you we don't like you, we turn you out in the cold. Maybe you can teach me, what is the attraction of [theatrical], of showing your film to three guys in raincoats? What's wrong with TV?"

Pat Aufderheide, director of the Center for Social Media at American University, appeared on the "Open Source/Fair Use" panel and signed copies of her primo primer, "Documentary Film: A Very Short Introduction" afterward.


A $5000 prize went for the second year to an emerging filmmaker whose work shares the "passion, humor, strong sense of social justice and personal point of view" of the late Canadian filmmaker and mentor Lindalee Tracey, who passed away in 2006 at the age of 49. Among her films: "A Scattering of Seeds: The Creation of Canada" and "Anatomy of Burlesque." Her husband, filmmaker Peter Raymont and her son presented the award to Elizabeth Lazebnik.

Ray Pride is a contributing editor of Movie City News and Filmmaker and movie critic of the Chicago weekly Newcity as well as a photographer. He observes independent film at Movie City Indie; links to his work are at his own site.

photos and text by Ray Pride


Hot Docs largely unwinds in the same zones as September's Toronto International, around pricey Yorkville and booming residential skyscrapers just south, as well as the grounds of Toronto U's Victoria College. Nearby Yonge Street still preserves some of its traditional tackiness, from its late-night cruising scene to tchotchke shops like this, purveying the latest refinements in gag technology.


The Hot Docs board of directors' annual Outstanding Achievement Award went to documentary pioneer Ricky Leacock, 86 years young. (Early in his career, Leacock worked with Robert Flaherty on "Louisiana Story" and later directed "Monterey Pop.") At the panel "The Feeling of Being There," Leacock dispensed pithy observations in his rich English purr: "Tripods are always in the wrong place"; "All these young filmmakers around, it's so weird"; and of "fly-on-the-wall" filmmaking: "Flies aren't very intelligent. You have to know what you're looking for. You're looking for the moment."


The Toronto Documentary Forum is a parallel event within Hot Docs, where 500 delegates observe thirty pre-selected international project presentations made by producers and commissioning editors, with over 130 key executives observing. Photographs during sessions are discouraged, but pitches from figures such Eugene Jarecki ("Why We Fight"), BBC Storyville's Nick Fraser, Peter Raymont and Danny Alpert, followed by pointed questions by programmers on three sides, are fast, dense and furious. Traditions include a draw from a Mountie hat for pitching position and a bottle of Grant's Scotch whisky at the presenter's seats—just in case.


Rudy Buttignol, Knowledge Network's president and CEO, was creative Head of Network Programming at TVO (TV Ontario), is one of the moderators at the parallel event for documentary pitching, the Toronto Documentary Forum. At a late afternoon reception at the Rogers Industry Centre at Victoria College.


Magnolia Pictures' Senior VP Tom Quinn, on the "Doc Forecast: The Next Five Years" panel. The panel's prognosis? Everybody knows something; nobody knows anything.


Ray Pride is a contributing editor of Movie City News and Filmmaker and movie critic of the Chicago weekly Newcity as well as a photographer. He observes independent film at Movie City Indie; links to his work are at his own site.

photos and text by Ray Pride

Hot Docs is North America's largest documentary festival, conference and market, and its 15th edition ran from April 17-27, with over 170 docs from Canada and around the world. Conferences, market events and the Doc Shop's a state-of-the-art video library system made for an intense 11 days on the ground. Public screenings were packed, and networking events insured an intoxicating amount of idealistic and constructive chatter even amid prevalent concerns about the future of production, exhibition and other ways to disseminate documentaries. A few faces, fixtures and glimpses of the Toronto surroundings follow.

Canada's not just another country; it's another culture, in many subtle and some very bold ways. The street food for one thing: carts dot the city, where vendors sell oversized grilled hotdogs you can garnish with several kinds of mustard, relish, olives, pickles, sauerkraut. Then there's this thing about brown gravy on fries, derived from the deadly delicacy, poutine, which also includes fresh cheese curds drooling onto the frites.


The subject of Siu Ta's "Daddy Tran: A Life In 3-D" demonstrated his remarkable 3-D photography to all; Tran's family history from Vietnam to Calgary is part of the tale, but the irrepressible Daddy Tran is a wonderful subject.


The 58-year-old Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, a pioneer of industrial music, was front man for influential bands from the 1980s, including Psychic TV and Throbbing Gristle, and is one of the figures in "Flicker," Nik Sheehan's portrait of Byron Gysin's hypnotic "dream machine" and his influence on 1960s luminaries such as William S. Burroughs, Iggy Pop, Kenneth Anger and Marianne Faithful. (Flicker won the special jury prize for Canadian feature doc.)


Karol Martesko-Fenster, from new online shorts concern Cinelan, was networking with filmmakers and shared the "Who Is Who in Digital Docland" dais with filmmakers Lance Weiler and Peter Wintonick, among others.


Peter Wintonick, director of "Manufacturing Consent," co-producer of "Be Like Others," "Doc Agora" co-founder, and a genial, knowing figure throughout the 11 days of Hot Docs.


Ray Pride is a contributing editor of Movie City News and Filmmaker and movie critic of the Chicago weekly Newcity as well as a photographer. He observes independent film at Movie City Indie; links to his work are at his own site.

Hot Docs and Canwest have announced two separate funds to assist Canuck doc-makers.  A $3 million completion fund will bestow up to $100 grand to productions companies with a Canadian broadcast license for specific projects.  In addition, there is a $1 million development fund that designed as a loan program:

"The Fund will provide no-interest loans ranging from $10,000 - $15,000 in the early development stage, when projects are at the highest risk and may have not yet secured a market partner." 

Canwest is Canada's largest media company.  Hot Docs will administer the fund.

Toronto-based Hot Docs will open with Sacha Gervasi's Sundance hit "Anvil! The Story of Anvil" (pictured) on April 17.  Also screening is Kurt Kueene's "Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son about his Father" which takes on Canada's controversial's criminal extradition policy by way of a recent tragic kidnapping.