When Chris McDonald, left, was hired by Hot Docs in 1998 he was the film festival’s first full-time employee: he was an executive director with an empty office and no staff taking over a small industry event with no public component and few, if any, international guests.
What a difference a decade makes! The 17th edition of Hot Docs opens on Thursday (April 29 – May 9) with a program featuring 170 films, 300 screenings and 2,000 delegates, half of whom will be coming from outside Canada. When McDonald arrived, the tiny festival hosted about 4,000 participants, this year’s audience will likely top out around 130,000. Hot Docs is the world’s penultimate documentary film festival and market, second only to Amsterdam’s IDFA (International Documentary Film Festival of Amsterdam).
“Toronto is a film capital now,” observes McDonald. “There are close to 100 film festivals here, more than in any other city in the world. Obviously, we owe a real debt to TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) for helping local audiences understand the opportunities that film festivals represent. We had 2,100 film submissions for this year’s festival; our professionals looked at all those films and selected their favourites, so Hot Docs gives the public an opportunity to see the very best documentary films in the world, films they won’t get to see anywhere else.”
So what’s new at the 2010 installment of the fest? McDonald points to a number of noteworthy items including retrospectives of two great female directors, Tahani Rached (still from These Girls, above) and Kim Longinotto, a spotlight on South American cinema, the Critical Mass speaker series (featuring international critics Sasha Frere-Jones, Paul Goldberger and Robin Givhan) and Ripping Reality, a retrospective of the last 10 years of documentary filmmaking, what McDonald calls “the documentary new wave. We’ve asked programmers from around the world to select films from what we see as an unprecedented era in documentary production and exhibition.” New venues this year include screenings at Koerner Hall and rooftop screenings atop the Cumberland Garage; free daytime screenings for seniors and students continue for the 10th consecutive year.
Of course, film fans will want to peruse the Hot Docs schedule to choose documentaries that dovetail with their own particular interests but McDonald singles out the following handful of films as being among the most entertaining and noteworthy:
Kings of Pastry (below) “A new film by D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus; it’s a world I’ve never seen before,” marvels McDonald, “it’s unbelievable.”
Secrets of the Tribe “Looks at an indigenous tribe in the Amazon basin, which was the subject of decades of research by anthropologists, who it turns out, were behaving in highly unethical ways — so it’s about the tribe and but also about the anthropologists going after each other.”
Leave Them Laughing “A heartwarming, hilarious film from Academy Award-winning Canadian filmmaker John Zaritsky.”
Teenage Paparazzo “An entertaining film directed by Adrian Grenier, the star of Entourage.”
Waste Land “A really good film by Lucy Walker that I suspect will have a shot at the audience favourite award. It’s about one of the world’s largest garbage dumps outside Rio and an artist (Vik Muniz) who shows the people how to make enormous art pieces.”
Life With Murder “An amazing, hearbreaking and dark film called by John Kastner about a Chatham Ontario family that’s been affected by murder.”
12th and Delaware “The story of an anti-abortion clinic that opens across the street from an abortion clinic in Florida.”
Mark “Toronto filmmaker Michael Hoolbloom’s brilliant film is his first at Hot Docs and we’re pretty excited about it; it’s a beautiful, personal film about somebody in his life.”
Babies The festival opener is joyful, worthwhile film as is RUSH: Beyond the Lighted Stage about one of Canada’s biggest rock music exports.
WHERE/WHEN: Hot Docs, April 29 – May 9, various venues and price points, see website for details.
Photo of Chris McDonald by Christopher Jones
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