A packed house at the Toronto premiere of director Nisha Pahuja’s first film Bollywood Bound brought Hot Docs 2002 to a close on Sunday, May 5, marking the end of a highly lucrative event for Canadian doc makers, broadcasters and distributors alike.

This year’s international documentary festival, held in Toronto April 26 to May 5, was the largest on record, expanding by three days from last year in response to growing public and industrial interest. The number of registered industry delegates rose from 1,400 last year to 1,542 this year and the Toronto Documentary Forum added more than 20 registered delegates, growing to 288 from 261 in 2001. One hundred and forty-nine commissioning editors, acquisition executives and distributors, with more than 100 screenings to select from and 1,130 additional films available from the Doc Shop, make Hot Docs a key documentary marketplace.

The Toronto Documentary Forum, where projects backed by a broadcaster pitch to an international panel of commissioning editors and broadcasters for additional funding, is the cornerstone of Hot Docs’ market events.

‘Pitch sessions at the TDF and Amsterdam are the two most important business stops of the year for me,’ says CBC Newsworld’s Catherine Olsen, one of 68 commissioning editors at the TDF.

Olsen also participated in a pitch for the CBC-backed Afghanistan’s Daughters, pitched by producer Barbara Barde and journalist Sally Armstrong, which offers unique access to Afghanistan’s female Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Women’s Affairs, Sima Samar.

Although no deals for additional funding have yet been confirmed, Olsen is particularly hopeful about CNN’s strong response to the film. ‘It would set a precedent for us to do any kind of coproduction or even a presale with CNN because they are competitors in the market,’ says Olsen. With more than half of the budget already confirmed, the producers are hoping to raise an additional $64,413, which would bring the total budget to $148,076.

But pitching at the TDF can be an important first step for many filmmakers, even if they don’t secure funding. ‘Even if we don’t bring any hard presale or coproduction dollars, I think the buzz after the pitch was extremely positive,’ says Olsen.

Michaelle McLean, director of the forum, says the TDF aims to connect buyers with sellers and ‘to bring the international community in the documentary genre to Canada’s doorstep.’

One Canadian project, Zero: Musings on Nothing, a first film pitched by Elida Schogt, received an immediate pledge of additional financing from Nick Fraser, commissioning editor for BBC Television. The film is a meditation on the impact of a mathematical concept on human consciousness. It has already raised 63.4% of its funding and is looking for an additional $57,072, for a total budget of $155,763.

Discovery Health in Canada and the U.S. expressed considerable interest in A Lion in the House, a documentary series pitched by Americans Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar, with funding from U.S.-based ITVS. The film aims to document the story of five American Midwest families from different racial and economic backgrounds with children diagnosed with cancer.

McLean says the film generated particular interest because footage has been collected over a number of years, with shooting beginning in 1997. ‘Most of the people around the table were very interested because so few filmmakers get an opportunity to do that now; the depth of the work is really impressive,’ she says.

CBC’s Passionate Eye and TVOntario expressed serious interest in a U.K. project called The Rivonia Trial, pitched by Pascale Lamache, with backing from the BBC, based on the early trials of Nelson Mandella.

In other festival news, Bollywood Bound, produced by the NFB, was sold to The Documentary Channel, TVO, Bravo! and The Knowledge Network. Trembling Before God, from American producer director Sandi Simcha DuBowski, has been picked up by Mongrel Media for theatrical release and will return to Toronto theatres in July. ‘It has a very strong track record and is rushing toward $1 million at the box office, which is very unusual for a documentary,’ says Hussain Amarshi, president of Mongrel.

Cautionary note

But amongst the hustle and business bustle of the festival, a note of caution came from the Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montreal when the Quebec doc fest released findings from an intense research initiative that revealed some concerning issues regarding the Canadian documentary industry.

After conducting extensive interviews with 34 producers and directors and 13 funders and broadcasters, as well as 290 responses from filmmakers to an online survey, project director Kirwan Cox reveals that ‘the majority of all interviewees, including broadcasters and funders, said the documentary funding/production/broadcast system was simply not working, especially for smaller producers and directors.’

Major issues identified by the Canadian documentary community included an overly complicated funding system, burnout among top Canadian filmmakers and the fact that POV documentaries are becoming increasingly difficult to make because funding bodies are being saturated with applications from broadcasters recently licensed by the CRTC.

‘I think this is a valuable snapshot of the opinions of independent filmmakers,’ says Jerry McIntosh, executive producer of CBC Newsworld documentaries. ‘But my own instinct is that [the report] is somewhat pessimistic. It presents a snapshot that says filmmakers are aging, tired and broke, when the survey itself identifies nearly a quarter of a billion dollars annually in documentary production.’

The volume of documentary production has increased, but there has not been a corresponding increase in funding available, therefore the amount of money given to individual films has decreased. But, as McIntosh points out, ‘there are large numbers of young filmmakers who are entering the business with new technology and who are managing to make films.’

Despite the increase in documentary production, Barri Cohen, filmmaker and national chair of the Canadian Independent Film Caucus, says the real concern raised by the new research is the poverty of vision, imagination and diversity in Canadian documentaries it reflects.

‘The rationale of efficiency has hurt diversity,’ she says. ‘[The report] is the only document we have that brings together all the issues facing directors, producers and distributors.’ Cohen referred to the report when representing the CIFC on May 9 at a meeting of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, as part of its study on the state of the Canadian broadcasting system.

-www.hotdocs.ca

-www.ridm.qc.ca

-www.mongremedia.com