February 2006 - Hot Doc's

© February 2006 - Hot Doc's By Bryen Dunn, Toronto - Info@bryendunn.com

Spring is just around the corner, and that means one thing is certain – Film Festivals abound throughout the city. Although not quite a “film fest”, Hot Doc's is certainly a festival worth exploring.

It’s billed as North America's largest documentary festival and the 13th annual edition takes place April 28 to May 7 this year.There were recent changes at the helm of the Festival as the Board of Directors appointed Alliance Atlantis Executive Norm Bolen to Co-Chair and Corus Entertainment’s Michael Harris to Treasurer. As well, it was recently announced that legendary director Werner Herzog will be presented with the Outstanding Achievement Award this year, and Quebec filmmaker Serge Giguere has been selected as the individual for Focus On, showing a retrospective of his past works.

During the downtime between actual Festival dates, those so inclined may want to check out the monthly Doc Soup running from October to April at the Bloor Cinema (506 Bloor Street West) at 7:00 pm.

At select DOC SOUP screenings, guest directors will be on hand to introduce their work and answer questions from the audience. The next two screenings are March 8 and April 5.

On March 8th, Unknown White Male explores how a New York City man suddenly leaves his home heading somewhere, but not knowing who he is or where he is going.

He must then try to put the pieces of his life back together just like a jigsaw puzzle.There’s an outstanding selection of 100+ documentaries from Canada and around the world as well as the renowned Toronto Documentary Forum, running May 3 & 4, 2006. For more information and the latest updates, go to http://www.hotdocs.ca/.

This story was published on juicystuff.ca