Hot Docs, North America’s largest documentary festival and market, opened last year just days after the SARS travel advisory was issued about Toronto, but this year festival organizers are hoping for smoother sailing despite a change of venue after a decade of hosting the event in Little Italy.

The Toronto neighborhood’s Royal Cinema will still host weekend and primetime screenings, but as a result of the condo craze on College Street taking over some of the larger venues traditionally used for Hot Docs’ industry events, and the festival’s dedication to making all its venues wheelchair accessible, Hot Docs has moved its base of operations east to the University of Toronto’s Isabel Bader Theatre, Victoria College and Hart House, home to this year’s Toronto Documentary Forum.

Hot Docs executive director Chris McDonald reports there is an increased number of feature-length documentaries at Hot Docs 2004, running April 23 to May 2, including world premieres of Canadian full-length docs such as The Take, produced and directed by Toronto’s Avi Lewis (counterSpin) and Naomi Klein (No Logo); I, Curmudgeon, written and directed by Alan Zweig; and Seeking Salvation from Toronto’s Travesty Productions.

In its International Showcase, the festival will feature a handful of films that tackle the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, including Checkpoint, Arna’s Children and Death in Gaza. The showcase will also feature titles from the U.S., including Supersize Me, Metallica, The Control Room and Searching for the Wrong-eyed Jesus.

And this year it will be easier for audiences to catch all the docs they’re interested in, as the festival is offering repeat screenings of almost 40% of its program, up from about 10% last year. According to McDonald, the festival is aiming to offer repeat screenings of all films next year.

In addition to screening documentary films from more than 25 countries, Hot Docs’ industry events, such as TDF, the festival’s pitch forum, provide a glimpse into what kind of docs will be commissioned in the coming year. McDonald says he has seen a larger-than-average number of arts-related docs and a decrease in the number of Canadian one-off docs submitted to the TDF.

In terms of technological trends, the digital format is on the rise in doc filmmaking, with McDonald saying that about 30% of this year’s films will be screened digitally, up from about 10% in 2003.

Canadian broadcast journalist Michael Maclear is the recipient of this year’s Outstanding Achievement Award. Mclear served as executive producer of CTV’s current affairs division in the early ’80s, but it was through his first-hand accounts of the Vietnam War, including exclusive coverage of Ho Chi Minh’s funeral, that Maclear made a name for himself. After leaving CTV, he went on to create the definitive 13-hour series Vietnam: the 10,000-Day War.

‘His work has had such a major impact on so many young directors, and he’s such an interesting combination of journalist and filmmaker, that he was an obvious choice,’ explains McDonald.

The festival will feature a retrospective of Maclear’s work, including his most recent doc, Vietnam: Ghosts of War, in which he embarks on a personal journey back to Vietnam, drawing parallels to the American invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

The festival will also showcase four feature docs from Canadian filmmaker Nettie Wild in its Focus On program.

‘Nettie Wild’s work has always been popular at festivals because her films have such a cinematic quality – she has a great sense of esthetics,’ says McDonald. ‘[Her work] tackles important issues, and much like Maclear, she’s known for digging and sticking with an issue until she finds her story.’

This year Hot Docs’ Spotlight program will focus on documentary filmmakers from the Netherlands. According to McDonald, the festival has seen a disproportionate number of Dutch films in its International Showcase for years.

‘The Netherlands has been a major force in documentary cinema for almost as long as Canada has – they’ve got Joris Ivens and we have Allan King,’ says McDonald. ‘We had a hard time limiting our selections to nine films, and were really struck by the number of strong, character-driven features we screened.’

In the middle of the festival, on April 27, South Africa will celebrate 10 years of democracy, and to recognize the occasion, Hot Docs is featuring four films from South African filmmakers. The small number of films surrounding the country’s HIV/AIDS crisis struck McDonald, who says the majority deal with political turmoil and identity as well as race and class tension. The docs were selected from among 13 films that were part of Project 10 – Stories from a Free South Africa, an initiative to help a new generation of South African directors present point-of-view, narrative documentaries.

-www.hotdocs.ca