There’s more than one way to slice a Gemini, as illustrated by the fact that this year’s nominees in the nonfiction categories are shared among several coproducing entities. Through it all, the National Film Board emerges as the biggest force in production, while the CBC is unsurprisingly dominant among broadcasters.

Tom Perlmutter, director-general of English programming for the NFB, points out that if you include the fact that two of the nominations for best documentary series, The Nature of Things and Rough Cuts, aired film board films, that brings the NFB tally up to 18 noms.

‘That’s quite a remarkable number for an organization that’s essentially limiting itself to documentary programming,’ he says.

The NFB has two noms for the Donald Brittain Award for Best Social/Political Documentary Program: El Contrato (a look at Mexican migrant workers in Canada) and No Place Called Home (up close with a working-poor family in Ontario).

It strikes Perlmutter that social-issue films largely account for the recent doc renaissance. ‘People seem to be hungering for that,’ he says.

NFB projects also figure in the arts documentary category, with the board having a hand in both Alter Egos (about the relationship between animators Ryan Larkin and Chris Landreth) and Jean-Pierre Perreault – Giant Steps (about the Quebec dance choreographer).

Perlmutter explains that some of the most successful docs lately are those that rely on unique filmmaker access, pointing to Shipbreakers (a copro between the NFB and Storyline Entertainment, up for two noms), shot in HD at India’s dangerous shipwrecking yards. That, he says, is one trend moving docs away from ‘a traditional television format of telling a particular story.’

Meanwhile, the CBC remains a force to be reckoned with among nonfiction Gemini noms, with the fifth estate alone getting 15 nods, the most this year for any information program. The pubcaster also swept the documentary series category, with shows including Rough Cuts, The Passionate Eye and The Nature of Things, and is well-positioned to take home trophies in the biography and science program categories.

While a strong showing at the Geminis is nothing new for CBC, its programs are evolving. About five years ago, the fifth estate moved from a traditional magazine format to a one-hour, single-subject form, and was rewarded with a 15% increase in audience, according to executive producer David Studer.

Studer notes that very little investigative journalism is done in Canada, and a magazine style was diffusing the resources. ‘This is a pretty big hammer, and often it seemed to me we were hitting pretty small nails,’ he says.

In the documentary categories, CBC snagged three of six biography noms: two for Life and Times programs (on Conrad Black and Nelson Mandela) and one for the Tommy Douglas episode of The Greatest Canadian. Meanwhile, the science and technology program category sees three CBC noms: two for episodes of The Nature of Things and one for The Origin of AIDS, which aired on CBC Witness.

Jerry McIntosh, director of documentaries for CBC News, points to a growing trend yet to be reflected in the Gemini nominations – the genre-bending that combines drama and documentary storytelling to tell big, sweeping stories, as in the reenactment of sugar-industry slavery in the doc Big Sugar.

Another trend McIntosh points to is shooting on HD to open up theatrical and, increasingly, even television markets.

‘HD is coming down the track, and people have got to get their head around it,’ he says. Although he says HD origination comes with a 15% to 30% price-tag increase, there is also the potential for greater visual impact.

‘With that kind of resolution, you’re into a whole other big experience,’ he says.

Both the CBC and the NFB are nominated for the Donald Brittain award for The Take, about Argentine workers who take over their factory. Sharing the producing credit with Naomi Klein, Avi Lewis and Silva Basmajian is Laszlo Barna, president and CEO of Toronto’s Barna-Alper Productions, who notes the rising popularity of nonfiction fare.

‘I’m old enough to know how significant a turnaround it has been for documentaries when young people walk into stores and don’t go to the drama section but get docs off the shelf,’ says Barna.

His company may be better known for dramas such as Da Vinci’s Inquest, but this year it’s up for three doc-related Geminis, including noms for history documentary program for its Turning Points of History and To Build a Nation series.

Barna’s company has steadily produced 20 to 40 hours of nonfiction a year, even when docs weren’t in vogue. ‘We suffered long,’ Barna says. ‘The pleasure is great.’

The pleasure is also roundly shared. Barna says the doc boom has highlighted how nonfiction programs and films can travel more easily than many dramas.

‘We’re able to work more in conjunction with other countries, raising budgets,’ he says. ‘We’re only now at the edge of seeing the potential returns on documentaries and nonfiction, as the value of these shows expands beyond the borders of television sets.’

While Barna is coproducing a new feature drama about retired Lt. General Roméo Dallaire’s experiences during the time of the Rwandan genocide, director Peter Raymont’s doc Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire is up for four nominations in doc craft categories, but in a typically curious Gemini occurrence, it is omitted from the Donald Brittain shortlist, despite grabbing major awards at Banff and Sundance.