ripping reality

(A still from BORIS RYZHY, a remarkable portrait of the Russian poet by talented filmmaker Aliona van der Horst. There are 9 Dutch doc productions at Hot Docs this year!)

Below is some text I drafted as a programme introduction for this year’s Festival, and which also formed the gyst of my comments at our press conference…

Wild Times
These are wild times, and in the pages which follow we describe works which take its pulse, which question, provoke, reflect and aid us in navigating the world in which we find ourselves. In short, these are our stories. Though a form more closely connected to its capacity to represent real people and events, documentary is also a narrative art. Stories, at their core, are a means of making sense of the world, of bringing some order to the murkiness and chaos of both the past and present. A quote from the filmmaker Wim Wenders comes to mind: “Stories are impossible, but it’s impossible to live without them. That’s the mess I’m in.”

The mess we’re all in becomes a little clearer in films like THE YES MEN FIX THE WORLD, H2OIL, LET’S MAKE MONEY, ENCIRCLEMENT, BLACK WAVE, INVISIBLE CITY, EPISODE 3: ‘ENJOY POVERTY’, WHICH WAY HOME, RACHEL, WATERLIFE, BURMA VJ, THE RED CHAPEL, THE END OF THE LINE…. you get the point. It all starts to seem a tad apocalyptic, but these works, and many more in this year’s Festival, not only confront the darkness, they ennoble, enlighten and empower us. Engaged filmmaking remains at the heart of documentary practice, and I don’t recall a year with such a concentration of truly political filmmaking, works which will change the way things are done, eventually. I can’t imagine anyone watching a film like OUTRAGE, or DEFAMATION, or THE COVE or MUGABE AND THE WHITE AFRICAN and not having an opinion changed, expanded or sharpened.

Everything documentary can do
Yet, our in-house programming motto remains the same: let’s show everything that documentary can do. And, from our Opening Night presentation through the Hot Docs programme, I’m truly amazed at the diversity of storytelling forms employed by nonfiction filmmakers. I remain convinced that documentary is the most vital and vibrant mode of expression available in contemporary audio-visual arts. Here’s the test: watch THE SOUND THE INSECTS, THOSE WHO REMAIN, MY GREATEST ESCAPE, SWEETY, BORIS RYZHY and ASCENSION, six titles somewhat indiscriminately chosen from our International Spectrum programme. Or choose another six, or sixteen, or sixty. You’ll be convinced, or converted, too.

So, there’s politics, there’s poetry, but mostly its about the people we meet, the places we enter, thanks to the filmmakers who bring these stories to our screens.  Cinema is the drama of vision, of faces and spaces, and our emotional and intellectual response to them. If we have a curatorial bias, its in the deep current of feeling that runs through the programme. We believe that, at the movies, you should be moved. We were, often. Just a few examples: THE ONE MAN VILLAGE, THE WAY WE GET BY, ABOUT FACE, ROUGH AUNTIES, INSIDE HANA’S SUITCASE, THEMIS AS A LOOSE LADY OF MORALS (gutted me), WINNEBAGO MAN…again, we could easily go on.

Things we could not have learned in any other way
A few notes about various programmes. In its second year, Next refines its focus to explorations of creativity in the performing and visual arts (not to mention sexual expression). Our theme programme this year, Let’s Make Money, requires no explanation. We’re celebrating the NFB’s 70th Anniversary with a modest, quirky retro of selections made by invitation. And, we’re delighted to recognize the work of two maverick Canadian filmmakers, Alanis Obomsawin (Outstanding Achievement) and Ron Mann (Focus On).

Reflecting on revolutionary times, in this case his months spent on the front lines of the Spanish Civil War, George Orwell wrote: “They formed a kind of interregnum in my life, quite different from anything that had gone on before and perhaps from anything that is to come, and they taught me things that I could not have learned in any other way….However much one cursed at the time, one realized afterwards that one had been in contact with something strange and valuable.”

It is in this spirit that we offer you Hot Docs 2009. And thank-you to all the filmmakers whose works we’ve considered. They’ve brought us in contact with things strange and valuable.

Great coverage from yesterday’s Press Conference. We’re fortunate to have alot of goodwill for our event, here in Toronto and throughout the doc community, so thanks for the support everybody! The complete programme is now online.

Indiewire          Hollywood Reporter          Screen Daily          Variety

The Globe and Mail       The  National Post       Toronto Sun       The Toronto Star

The schedule has gone to print (even as we continue to get calls from people wanting to submit!). This Tuesday, March 24,  we’ll announce the full programme via a press conference and media releases. The entire team is thrilled with the programme. Festivals claim each year is their best year, but I have to say it, because I believe it to be true….This is the strongest programme that Hot Docs has ever presented.

Beyond being professionally satisfied that we’ve achieved all of our goals, I’ve never been involved with a programme in which I was so personally moved, entertained, in awe, challenged and inspired by such a high percentage of the filmmaking and stories. I always have some favourites, but this year I have too many. We’ve also never declined so much good work that rightfully deserved to be presented, which is a bummer, and has made this week rather bittersweet.

Above is the 2009 schedule board, or as I like to call it, my personal Sudoku game. Playing Sudoku is the closest analogy I know to scheduling a film festival. Noah Cowan at TIFF was a genious at this, and I learned much from watching him work the board (or “cross-hatch” in Sudoku lingo). The TIFF schedule board is a work of graphic art, crazily complex with lovely, intricate 2″ x 2″ cards for each title, all the relevant tech info inscribed. Our Hot Docs board is rather low rent in comparison, employing the Post-It and Sharpie system…..though I do find it graphically appealing against my otherwise spartan office walls.

Finally. Today we announced several titles from the Hot Docs 2009 programme, including our Opening Night presentation, the world premiere of Jennifer Baichwal’s ACT OF GOD.

Its been a white-knuckle finish (as always), but the programme is closed, the schedule is just about locked, and we can finally focus on the best part of the work: getting the films out there.

I was surprised to learn (just yesterday!) that this is the first time Hot Docs has launched with a Canadian production. TIFF has made it almost a policy to do so, but while over my three year tenure at Hot Docs its been a goal, we just haven’t found the right fit. Last year we came close, I suppose, as ANVIL! THE STORY OF ANVIL was Canadian in every way, except the funding (and, Team Anvil, congrats on an amazing UK Opening last week).

Opening Night can be a tough slot to program, as there are so many things an effective Opener has to do. First, and most importantly, it should be an engaging screening experience for the audience, keeping in mind that this audience is not always the core audience for the Festival. As well, there should be an element of cachet connected to the presentation. And, of course, the Opening Night film should stimulate advance attention for the Festival, driving the first wave of publicity for the entire event. The Opening Night film also, often unfairly, has to endure a higher level of scrutiny than the rest of the programme.

Our feeling is that ACT OF GOD holds up quite strongly on all fronts. Baichwal and Nick de Pencier, her collaborator in art and life, have made an elegant, intelligent and captivating film on the metaphysical effects of being struck by lightening. The film interweaves seven stories (and is, in a sense, also about storytelling), including that of writer Paul Auster, who was struck as a teenager. Also featured is the composer and avant guitarist Fred Frith, who improvised a portion of the film’s score (underscoring, if you will, another theme of the film: randomness and chance).

Besides the film itself, the cachet comes from Jennifer’s standing as one of our finest nonfiction filmmakers. Over several works (THE HOLIER IT GETS, LET IT COME DOWN: THE LIFE OF PAUL BOWLES, THE TRUE MEANING OF PICTURES) Jennifer has steadily accumulated acclaim and awards, but MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES took her career to the next level, earning the Best Canadian Film award at TIFF, then becoming an international hit, and one of the most successful Canadian doc releases ever. With ACT OF GOD, which was produced by Nick de Pencier and Daniel Iron (one of Canada’s hottest producers), Jennifer continues to advance as an artist. Alluding to a quote from the film, this is her “ars poetica.”

So, 9 1/2 Weeks after our first programming meeting and we have a festival….and therefore we dedicate this year’s programme to Mickey Rourke, my brother.

On Wednesday of this week we’ll email all confirmed filmmakers their tentative festival schedules, and then next Monday, March 16, we will have a locked schedule. The programme itself is essentially finished, with only a few loose ends to knot this week. This is mainly due to some footsy from a few of the invited films. We’d love to include them in Hot Docs, but we’re at the point where we can no longer wait for a decision. Hint hint.

Last week I wrote about the difficultly of declinations, and our approach to it. But with 3-5 of the invited films we’ll be on the receiving end of the kiss off. This is also a normal part of the programming process, and happens at every festival, the biggest and the smallest. Programmers at smaller regional or local events probably assume, poor-pitiful-us-like, that festivals such as  Cannes, Sundance and TIFF have films spread out for them like they’re Kobayashi at Nathan’s annual hot dog eating contest: that they get whatever they want and never have to email invitees, like, every third day waiting for a confirmation. Not true. The studios and major producers keep them dangling too, often yanking films last minute. The festival gods giveth, and they taketh away.

Every event has a “competitor” to which they lose coveted titles. Hot Docs used to lose one or two to Tribeca, but now that we follow them that’s been resolved. More recently I’ve noticed that Cannes has become a factor for documentaries, and hence Hot Docs. Huh? I understand this for world premieres of big talent docs (like a Michael Moore, or an Errol Morris), but it baffles me, on every level, otherwise. Last year two of the better received Sundance docs blew off several festival invitations, including ours, waiting for Cannes. Neither got in. This year three of the films we’re awaiting word from are caught up in the Cannes juggernaut. They’re all good films, but none of them, based on my experience tracking Cannes’ English language doc selections, have a reasonable chance to be invited. The one film that has already, quite gracefully and in a timely fashion (thank-you), declined our invite just also happens to have the best chance for Cannes.

But, what can I say….don’t wait for Cannes? Of course you’re going to wait for Cannes! I would. Who wouldn’t want to have a film in the world’s most prestigious festival? Even buried in a sidebar, and with travel expenses costing more than the entire budget of your film…its fuckin’ Cannes. Looks good on the resume.

So, I don’t get too worked up about Cannes. Its certainly less irksome than some of the other reasons producers/distributors/filmmakers reject us. They are:

1) “Waiting for a distributor.” Really?  Good luck with that.

2) “Another, much smaller and less relevant festival with absolutely no documentary industry presence insists on playing my film, if they have the world premiere…..of my nice, low key observational film that is quite good, if unmarketable in a commercial sense, and will need EVERY opportunity available to be noticed in a cluttered market.” Really? And will this festival be clearing your credit card debt, helping to fund your next film…heck, paying for even one night’s hotel?

3) “Still waiting for a distributor.” Okay, call me.

4) “My film is ready for the world, and I’m thrilled you like it and I looove your festival…..but I’m going to wait several months for what I presume will be a  better festival invitation, and if we don’t get that invitation I’m going to wait a few more months for another, and if we don’t get that, um….well, I don’t know, maybe we’ll try to get a distributor or something.”

5) “We’d like an $800 Euros screening fee.” This one I get, totally…but Hot Docs doesn’t pay screening fees, and won’t until we can pay everybody a screening fee. Which would be great, wouldn’t it? Until then, we hope that we offer credible sales and marketing opportunities, along with the opportunity to advance filmmaking careers (and we do. I truly believe this, or I couldn’t say it, personal ethics wise). So far only one film has declined due to lack of screening fees at our event. Respect.

6) “We’re trying to get a sales agent so we can get a distributor….and even though we’ve been waiting for months for sales agents to even look at the screeners we’ve sent them, we’re confident this will all be wrapped up in a week, so we’ll be in touch. And please save us a good slot.”

7) “Are you an Oscar qualifying event?” Um, I don’t even know. Are we?

Why does the digit “8″ followed by the symbol “)” result in this silly happy face icon in WordPress? I’m so not an emoticon kind of guy. How do I make that go away? (the icon, that is. not my misanthropy re: emoticons, which I’m totally comfortable with) Obviously, this is a digression and has nothing to do with a documentary not accepting an invitation to Hot Docs. And, is this particular happy face emoticon one of those that’s supposed to be wearing sunglasses? I can’t tell.

9) “Twenty people have given me conflicting advice and I’m paralyzed by doubt and indecision.” Tick tick tick….

10) “Shit, sorry I didn’t respond to your repeated emails, phone calls, smoke signals, or the police knocking on my door on your behalf…is it too late to get into the festival? And, do you know any good distributors?”

Yeah, its too late. We’re done…..almost.

We’ve started scheduling the Festival, and only have a few slots left to fill. Earlier I had expressed uncertainty regarding the timing of a given submission.  However, now I realize that its much better to get a film in as close to the deadline as possible, or earlier. For the past two weeks we’ve been looking at submissions with a much more limited range of consideration than that with which we started. Now we’re asking ourselves two questions: 1) Is this work better than those we’ve invited? and/or 2) Does it fill a gap in the current programme? Its just not enough that a film is good, at this point, where that might have been the case earlier in the process.

We have more than 1800 screeners in the office, and given the hundreds of films screened at other events, we’ll have considered more than 2000 documentaries for this year’s Festival. Here’s a top ten list of submissions by country of production, features and shorts combined:

USA                507
Canada           381
Germany         122
UK                  113
Australia          78
France             73
Netherlands    73
Israel              72
Italy                58
Spain              51

The next two weeks are my least favourite of the year. Not only are all the deadlines hitting (confirming and scheduling the programme; note writing; publicity), but filmmakers and other suppliers are being notified of declinations. As the above numbers would indicate, we’re the bearers of bad news much more frequently than good news. I’ve been doing this long enough to know how important it is, especially to independent filmmakers, to get the validation of a festival presentation. That, and I’ve been doing it long enough to know many of these people personally.

Yuck, is all I can say. Its especially difficult knowing that 20-30% of the work that will be declined is easily interchangeable with many films which we’ll screen. Yes, we could present an entire other festival, with pride, from the work we’ve not selected for Hot Docs 2009. This is one of the reasons certain events become bloated. Its hard to say “no” to good work. But, I wonder if burying a film in a baggy programme, maybe in a lousy slot, is more beneficial than being disciplined. We’ve gradually expanded Hot Docs from about 80 new features four years ago, to what will likely be some 120 features this year. That’s big enough.

The year before I started programming documentaries for TIFF, they showed 9 feature docs. The year I left, we showed more than 30. It was rewarding to know that docs had carved out some significant real estate in one of the world’s premiere events…but I also recall feeling that at that number some good work was being lost, needles in a haystack, especially considering there were over 250 dramatic features to compete against. Berlin seemed to have slightly fewer docs this year, Sundance (at 45 nonfiction features) the most yet. Tribeca, I hear, will have a trimmer programme, but SXSW will present over 60 feature documentaries this year. Given the odds, any filmmaker rejoices at being selected to these major events. However, be vigilant about scheduling and venues….that’s the most important indication of how a festival feels about your work. Not just have they invited it, but have they given it a good slot? Does your film have a reasonable chance to get some love in a crowded, competitive environment?

So, along with scheduling, this week I’ll be writing personal notes to many people, some of them friends, confirming that we haven’t selected their work. Many many others will get a form letter. As I’ve mentioned before, Piers Handling, my programming mentor, told me articulating why a work wasn’t selected was one of the most important parts of the job, as important as championing that which is presented. My approach leans toward explaining the process, and avoiding any direct critiques of individual works. That’s a dead end, as I’ve learned the hard way. My hope is that given the integrity and transparency of our process, and the overall quality of the programme which will eventually be announced, that our decisions are accepted with some grace. And, in fact, that’s the case…most of the time.

Better news is that soon I can start writing about the films that we’ll actually show. We start making programme announcements on March 10, and our entire programme will be released on March 24.