Among the 104 Canadian films at this year’s Vancouver International Film Festival, organizer Diane Burgess wrote in more than the usual number of documentaries. There are 22 docs in the 2002 Canadian Images program, up from 13 in 2001, including premieres such as Adventures in Breathing by Karen Murray (Life’s Evening Hour) and EVO by noted documentarian Oliver Hockenhull (Building Heaven, Remembering Earth: Confessions of a Fallen Architect).

‘We’ve always received a lot of documentaries, but this is a particularly strong year,’ says Burgess, now in her third year as Canadian Images programmer. ‘Different things seem to pop up every year – the same way last year there were a lot of films from the Maritimes. This year there were a bunch [of docs] and experimental films. I figure in 10 years I’ll know if it’s cyclical or not,’ she adds with a laugh.

Docs are booming because of supply and demand – a greater and cheaper supply of film equipment and increased demand for programs to fill the new digital TV channels.

Likewise, Burgess says the festival is seeing an increasing number of short films. ‘A lot more people are making films without having to go through the whole funding process,’ she says.

B.C.-based Genie winner Nettie Wild is back with her first film since 1998’s acclaimed A Place Called Chiapas. Fix: The Story of an Addicted City, turns the lens on Vancouver’s crime-riddled and drug-addled Downtown Eastside, asking complex questions about drug policies and the lives of drug users.

Burgess says the Eastside, which has the highest HIV infection rates in North America, is a nettlesome issue for all Vancouverites. But she stresses that Wild has handled the subject with skill and tact. Area residents have complained to production companies that the recent spate of filming in that neighborhood disrupts the (underground) economy and exploits the downtrodden.

Not so in Fix, says Burgess. ‘I think she’s opening a really interesting and vital discussion…looking at the Eastside and the issues of drug use and the desire to open safe injection sites, which have been proven to lower the probability of overdose and the cost associated with emergency care.’

Canadian Images has also scored several big dramas. Winnipeg’s Guy Maddin brings his retelling of the Bram Stoker classic to the screen with Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary, part of the Special Presentation series filled out with David Cronenberg’s Spider, Between Strangers by Edoardo Ponti and Ararat, the latest from Atom Egoyan.

Burgess opens her program this year with Flower & Garnet, the much-talked-about debut by local talent Keith Behrman. ‘It’s a great opening film,’ she says. ‘Keith is unquestionably a director to watch.’

Vancouver’s Guy Bennett, another poster boy apparent for 2002, brings his directorial debut Punch, fresh from its premiere in Toronto, and filmmaker Mina Shum is back in the game, after a five-year absence since Drive, She Said, with Long Life, Happiness and Prosperity. With her newest feature, Shum is returning to the Chinese-Canadian heritage that informed her 1994 breakthrough Double Happiness.

‘She is getting back to those questions, but in a much broader scope,’ says Burgess. ‘Instead of focusing on just one character she’s weaving together three stories and it’s more rooted in the Chinese-Canadian community.’

Shum, her cowriter Dennis Foon, Bennett and Behrman are among the seven filmmakers up for the new $12,000 Citytv Western Canada Screenwriters Award. ‘I think it’s fantastic because it really helps the independent talent continue to work,’ says Burgess. ‘So after everything they pour into that first or second feature, it helps them continue to focus. It’s really an important recognition.’