(the glamorous life of documentary programming. here’s my view for the next two months: a screen and several multi-region DVD players, that’s how I roll…a window onto the world, literally)
“Dad, how would you do this documentary watching job if you didn’t have a TV?” A fine question from my six-year-old son, Jimmy. Its Sunday night, and I’m just wrapping up week one of the Hot Docs programming season. Jimmy pokes his head into my home office occasionally, and usually gets waved off. Tough love. “Not appropriate?” he asks, rhetorically. Meaning, there’s something on screen that isn’t for a six-year-old’s eyes or ears. Not appropriate. By now, he knows his Dad will be doing alot of documentary watching for the next coupla months. Much of it won’t be appropriate.
We, the Hot Docs programming team and I, are looking for about 175 films which are appropriate. Not for a six-year-old, but for our smart, generous, curious Hot Docs audience, which includes the international industry that attends our event looking for “product.” More than 2000 films will be viewed, the vast majority of them at least twice. We won’t watch ALL of ALL of the films. Sorry.
But, we will cull our submission shelves as thoroughly and thoughtfully as any film festival in the world. On this point, I’m obsessive. Filmmakers pay submission fees (which only cover a portion of properly administrating an unsolicited submissions process) with the expectation that the work they’ve just went broke making is going to be considered by capable people. Here’s our process:
1) A team of 11 Programmers and Associate Programmers start screening submissions in mid-December, and screen heavily through February. We do this in our homes, sometimes in pajamas and not fully groomed, often late into the evening.
2) The International Programming team meets weekly to discuss the work we’ve seen, and begins “shortlisting” certain works. The Canadian Programming team (Lynne Fernie, Gisèle Gordon and Associate Programmer Michelle Latimer ) meet less frequently, but are in frequent contact.
3) Through January and into early February our Programming team is focused on building up the Short List. We’ll have a few hundred titles in play at its peak. Meanwhile, the Associate Programmers are giving second and third looks to work passed on by Programmers, making sure we haven’t missed anything (though we will, there’s enough good work for two festivals). The Associate Programmers are also screening shorts, making recommendations to Programmers.
4) Getting into mid-February we will have screened every submission at least once. At this point our focus is trimming a very long Short List into what becomes the Hot Docs programme. This can be agony, and by nature is a heartless endeavour. The filmmakers on our team find it particularly tough. Meanwhile, we’re also doing diligence, making sure everything has been seen at least twice.
Most of the Hot Docs programme is invited in the middle weeks of February. We will have locked our programme by the first week of March. We’ll announce the entire programme on March 24 (though some titles are announced earlier), and this year’s Festival is April 30 – May 10.
We don’t screen, nor make decisions, by committee. The best way I can describe our meetings is that they’re like editorial meetings at a newspaper…or, more precisely, they’re like editorial meetings on the Eighties tv drama The Lou Grant Show. Our Programmers summarize and champion the works they’ve shortlisted. They’re, in a sense, pitching films they believe, at times passionately, should be in the Festival. My promise to them is that every film they personally feel MUST be shown at Hot Docs, is shown at Hot Docs. Even if nobody else in the room shares their love of a particular work. I believe strongly in these personal, sometimes idiosyncratic, choices. But, the Programmer must provide a coherent, convincing argument on a film’s behalf.
Piers Handling, Director of the Toronto International Film Festival Group, gave me some great advice upon anointing me a Programmer at TIFF. He told me, essentially, that the job required that I do two things well: articulate clearly and confidently why I thought a film should be presented at the Festival; and, articulate clearly and confidently why a film should NOT be shown at the Festival. Verbally, in writing the programme note, to the media and on stage at the film’s premiere. This is the core skill I look for in our Programmers. It definitely took me longer to learn the second part of that equation (speaking confidently to filmmakers whose work has been declined is an especially delicate task), but more on that another time.
Next post I will go into a bit more detail on my role as Director of Programming, and the overall philosophy which informs Hot Docs curation. I also want to finish the notes from my November travels, and this week its, eek, Sundance.