What’s up doc? ’94 (April 5-10) will include public screenings at Toronto’s Art Gallery of Ontario, and with premieres such as Ron Mann’s Dream Tower on the bill, this event promises to help draw the documentary format well into the mainstream of popular entertainment.

Documentaries are finally getting their due as art.

In part, they have fragmentation to thank for this. The audience has always been there, but there was no way to get to them.

In the dark past, Canada’s independent documentary filmmakers often felt they were operating in a thankless demi-monde, producing footage that would rarely have an opportunity to see the light of theatrical release, or even broadcast in Canada, despite Canadians’ international documentary repute.

Private broadcasters were not interested in documentaries and public broadcasters, although amenable, had little space on their schedules. Since licence fees were miniscule, independent documentary producers united to pull together enough money to make documentaries, and the Canadian Independent Film Caucus was formed.

Some trace the upward swing in documentary fates to the need for more niche programming that cable expansion created. Funding agencies stepped in to ensure Canadians had indigenous fare, and in 1985 documentaries gained eligibility for Telefilm Canada’s broadcast fund.

Theater fragmentation was also a boon for documentaries. While a pov doc might not attract 500 moviegoers, the advent of multiplex allowed narrow-stream docs to fill available seats.

On the even smaller screen, particularly in the last year, documentary strands at cbc and tvontario have provided a welcome window for indie doc producers and viewers alike.

On the eve of more specialty channels, the future looks bright for documentaries’ quest for alternative programming venues.

And at the box office, documentaries are also looking rosy. Stephen Low’s imax film Titanica grossed $7 million on only 12 screens. In Toronto alone it grossed over $2 million, and it’s still going strong in Ottawa. And at an astounding average occupancy of 80%.

International sales for documentaries are also healthy. Titles such as John Walker’s Strand: Under the Dark Cloth (1988), the National Film Board/Necessary Illusions production Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, and Mann’s Comic Book Confidential sold in all the major territories, as did another Mann project, Twist, which brought in more money than your average Canadian feature.

While the fiction well may run dry of new concepts, life always supplies new documentary material. It is these events, the crises, the discoveries, the fascinating lives, that make documentaries riveting. Unlike fiction, where the filmmakers (and sometimes the audience) know exactly what’s going to happen, documentary filmmaking is more like endlessly fielding curve balls. It’s this challenge to the filmmaker that provides the magic to the viewer.

Hot Docs! is long overdue.