A History of Violence took four statues – for best film, director, sound editing and picture editing – at the fifth annual Directors Guild of Canada Awards on Oct. 14 in Toronto, beating out Atom Egoyan’s sexy noir Where the Truth Lies in all but one of its nominated categories.

Although director David Cronenberg wasn’t in attendance (he’s prepping his next feature), his crime drama was the top winner of the night, missing only one nomination, for production design, which went to Truth’s Phillip Barker.

Before the handing out of the 19 craft and team achievement awards, host Peter Keleghan (The Newsroom) quipped to the audience that ‘If we start now, we might just finish in time for the Geminis.’

Human Trafficking, Muse Entertainment’s $15-million miniseries for Lifetime Television chronicling the international sex slave trade, claimed three prizes, including team achievement in a television movie or miniseries, production design and direction.

Egoyan presented the award for direction to an absent Christian Duguay (who was shooting the feature thriller Straight Edge in the Fiji Islands), taking the opportunity to remark that 20 years ago he approached that night’s DGC lifetime achievement winner Allan King to sign his DGC entry letter. Apparently a condition of the signature was that he listen to a speech – the same one King made earlier when he accepted his lifetime award.

King made a politically charged and impassioned address, lamenting that there was ‘no radical left, left’ and recalling his childhood, a time when the ‘the idea of becoming a filmmaker was preposterous.’

The noted documentarian acknowledged TVO’s Rudy Buttignol for ‘getting me back in [to documentaries],’ and Toronto International Film Festival Group CEO Piers Handling for the retrospective done by TIFF in 2002 that made him ‘fully realize what I’ve been doing for the past 50 years.’ The CBC is planning to release a collection of King’s films on DVD in 2007.

The distinguished service award went to Crawford Hawkins, managing director of the B.C. district council of the DGC, for his more than 25 years in the industry.

Other winners included previous DGC nominee Kari Skogland for best direction in a television series for Terminal City, and Northern Town – which aired on CBC – for outstanding team achievement in a comedy series.

www.dgc.ca