‘I see it as the little festival that could,’ says executive director Debbie Nightingale of Hot Docs!, set in motion four years ago by the Canadian Independent Film Caucus despite a feasibility study that said it wouldn’t attract an audience.

But this documentary-laden engine is chugging full-speed ahead and this year’s event promises to be the biggest yet, with entries soaring from 200 in ’96 to 327, double the number of screenings (over 100), twice as many awards up for grabs, the opening of international categories, and a contingent of foreign reps heading to Toronto to check it out.

This fourth annual festival, running March 18-23 at Toronto’s Metropolitan Hotel, marks a turning point in its young history.

‘It’s growing beyond its roots,’ says Nightingale of Hot Docs!’s new status as an international festival. In response to numerous requests from abroad, three new international award categories have been added. ‘We wanted to increase the festival’s profile,’ she says. ‘National festivals are seen as quaint and sweet and nice, but now when I go to other festivals and say ours has opened internationally, suddenly we’re a serious contender.’

Going international is also attracting non-Canadian buyers and producers to the festival, and Nightingale is pushing the market opportunities.

‘The time has come and gone when you can totally subsidize your film in Canada, so we’re bringing the international players here,’ says Nightingale, noting that Hot Docs! can now call itself the only international documentary festival in North America.

She’s selling Hot Docs! as the bridge between North America and Europe, a market where foreign documentary producers and buyers can do business annually with Canadians and Americans.

And the international community is biting. Overseas registration is around 15%, and names on the list include Discovery International programmer David Spindler, A-Channel Drama Fund executive director Joanne Levy, and La Sept Arte programmer Pierre Merle. The media program, an audiovisual funding initiative formed by European Economic Community countries, is sending over a contingent of 20 Europeans in search of coproduction potential.

Roughly another 15% of the confirmed registrants are American, including Jennifer Hyde from Turner Original Productions’ documentary unit. She’s headed north seeking coproduction opportunities and to ‘meet the most talented up-and-coming filmmakers,’ noting Turner’s doc production slate is rapidly expanding.

She credits the outpouring of all the new information specialties with increasing audience appetite for docs across the board on all networks. But Turner is moving away from four- to six-hour epic doc specials, says Hyde. The network’s documentary window (Sundays 9 to 11 p.m.) also airs broadcast premieres of movies and the Network has found it difficult to hold this general audience throughout the span of a multi-part doc special.

However, one- to two-hour programs, particularly personal stories of people experiencing the world in unique ways, are their most successful docs of late and Hyde’s scouting for these types of projects in Canada. She notes the top audience draw in the doc slot this year was on biker women.

Hyde is interested in high production values but not necessarily high budgets. ‘If someone pitches a fantastic show produced with $10,000 on a credit card, that’s just as good if not better than one with three-quarters of a million dollars worth of corporate financing.’

a&e manager of specials Amy Briamonte is making a stop at Hot Docs! with the aim of working with independent producers on commissioned work or copros for the specialty’s Sunday Night Documentary Specials strand (two-, four- and six-hour programs) and one-offs for its Investigative Reports window. She also has slots available for performing arts programs.

Briamonte notes that Canada is an important source of a&e’s viewership so she wants to look at Canadian stories. But she’s not shopping for finished product: ‘We have a strong vision of what we want to see on the air so acquisitions are difficult.’

The recently formed English Language Coproduction Network is holding its first steering committee meeting at the festival, bringing a number of international producers to Toronto to talk partnerships.

To stimulate these market opportunities, a matchmaking service – the Financier’s Club – has been organized to hook up producers looking for presales with interested buyers.

The pitching session returns with Pat Ferns of the Banff Television Festival at the helm (at press time, the four pitchers had not yet been chosen).

Debuting this year is the Marketplace Screening Series, which will include screenings of films not nominated for awards. The series runs throughout the festival and is open to the public as well as delegates.

Producers can also shop their works among the scores of buyers by submitting works to a video library for unofficial screenings and listing projects on a new Hot Docs! Web site.

With the international community out in full force, coproduction is the hot topic sure to stir up debate on the conference front. ‘It’s an interesting compromise to find something which will involve a Canadian and American audience as well as travel to the international market,’ Hyde admits of coventures.

‘With different task masters each wanting a different film, you end up making homogenous mush that looks pretty,’ says Michael Kot, producer of Hot Docs! nominee Let Freedom Ring, which he chose to finance completely on a licensing fee from CBC Newsworld’s Rough Cuts.

In addition, he says, putting the financial jigsaw puzzle together at the international level is also time consuming. ‘It kills you creatively when you spend 95% of your time trying to work out these deals to get your film made.’

Associated Producers’ Simcha Jacobovici, with both Ebola: Inside an Outbreak and The Selling of Innocents vying for awards, says it’s a mistake to see the international market as dangerous for Canadian content.

‘It can be exploited to strengthen Canadian stories,’ he argues, explaining that as long as producers can access broadcast windows, funds and tax credits in Canada and then look to international presales to put together the final chunks of funding, Canadian stories with an international scope get told.

Internationalization, he says, will create more, not less Canadian content because it will build strong companies generating revenue from the international marketplace that can be reinvested in producing more Canadian stories.

But Jacobovici warns that if the government abandons its cultural infrastructure, producers will be forced to look to the international market as a substitute, and then Canadian content is doomed. ‘Instead of going to the international marketplace from a position of strength you go from a position of weakness, and then you can only make films the international market wants.’

Money matters

Funding horizons on the Canadian scene are also up for panel discussion. While many nominees are worried about budget cuts to government-funded broadcasters, Ottawa producer Neil Bregman claims it’s ‘the best thing to happen to the independent production industry’ because it enables indie producers like himself greater access to presale and coproduction opportunities at what were once closed in-house windows.

Nominees are also noting the general financial crunch at all the broadcasters is making coproductions between them increasingly attractive. At a&e, for example, Briamonte notes that projects with the cbc are being looked at favorably.

Hybrid docs

The trend towards hybrid documentary/current affairs programs is another topic slated for conference debate. Michael Kot, for example, is finding that as budgets decrease, opportunities to finance classic documentary-style films, like his nominated Let Freedom Ring, are drying up and less expensive report-style films are becoming the mainstay.

‘Filmmakers are forced to decide what their story is going to be ahead of time, write it, get experts and add pictures because it’s cheaper to shoot that way.’

But Bregman says redefining the definition of documentary is also opening windows. He has a series exploring international issues in home architecture and design airing on the Life Network and a second cycle in development. He is applying for documentary genre approval from the Canada Television and Cable Production Fund.

With the growing demand from specialties for programs straddling magazine/lifestyle/documentary genres, Bregman says more producers are looking to get these programs funded as docs.

More specialties are on the horizon, and their future role in documentary production is also on the conference schedule. The History and Entertainment Network’s Norm Bolen and Suzanne Steeves, senior vp original programming at Baton Broadcasting, are among the ‘New Canadian Reality’ panelists discussing their plans.

The growing number of specialties worldwide are seeking volume and long-running programs that build audiences, notes Jacobovici, with the effect that Associated Producers’ development slate is beginning to focus less on one-offs and look more to series.

He says prices per episode are also falling, so there’s a need to produce more to amortize costs over a larger number of productions.

Jacobovici says across the board broadcasters are insisting on tighter budgets, licence fees are low, and some are insisting the tax credit is included in financing. This, he says, ‘goes against the spirit of the tax credit – it’s becoming a back-end subsidy for broadcasters.’ However, he says there is still a place for high-budget docs and Associated Producers will continue to produce one-offs with million-dollar price tags.

Celebrating excellence

Hot Docs!’s mandate isn’t just to look at the future of documentary production, it also serves as a venue to celebrate the past year of filmmaking, and this year 16 awards are up for grabs, including some new additions

The Shaw Children’s Programming Initiative approached Hot Docs! to sponsor a best children’s documentary award. ‘Gerri Cook [scpi executive administrator] wants to make sure that people are aware there are children’s docs and money is available for them through the [Shaw] fund,’ says Nightingale, noting a jury of kids selected the nominees.

Vision tv is offering a $5,000 prize (to be converted into a broadcast licence or development of a future project with Vision) to the film best exploring humanitarian concerns. A Telefilm Canada Award with the same cash prize will be awarded to the producer of the best Canadian feature-length doc.

An awards gala at the Concert Hall, featuring the offbeat wit of host Elvira Kurt, will cap off the festival and Newsworld’s Roughcuts will broadcast highlights in a one-hour special March 31.

‘We’re at a crossroads,’ says Nightingale, both of documentary production in Canada and of the great leaps taken by this little festival that grew. ‘Do we want to go more international, be more of a market? Or will we lose our Canadian identity? We will have to sit down after this festival and assess where we go from here.’