Hot Docs 2011

-- James Marsh, whose Man on Wire was superb, has a new doc Project Nim; the subject is Nim Chimpski, “a chimpanzee whose epic life story unfolds against startling human error, eccentricity and hubris.” Thursday, May 5th 9:45PM and Friday May 6th 11:00AM.

-- Gianfranco Rosi’s El Sicario, Room 164, in it a sicario “confesses the secrets of his lethal 20-year career.” Monday, May 2nd 6:15PM and Wednesday, May 4th 11:00AM.

-- Allan Sekula and Noël Burch in The Forgotten Space explore "the catastrophic effects globalization has wrought on the ship, truck and train industries." Friday, May 6th 9:30PM and Saturday, May 7th 8:15PM.

-- Charles Officer’s follow up to the full-length feature Nurse.Fighter.Boy (which I wrote about here) is Mighty Jerome; “Race, national pride and tragic misfortune shape the story of 1960s track star Harry Jerome.” The former hockey-player turned director, since Nurse.Fighter.Boy, made a TV-series on musicians, City Sonic. Friday, April 29th 9:30PM, Saturday, April 30th 11:00AM, and Sunday, May 8th 4:30PM

-- Gary Burns and Jim Brown in their new documentary The Future is Now! “tackle the future in this documentary-drama hybrid.” Thursday, May 5th 9:00PM and Saturday, May 7th 1:00PM.

There are also two programs worth checking out:
-- Outstanding Achievement, Retrospective Honouring Terence Macartney-Filgate, which includes A Candid Eye (04/05 6:45PM), Timothy Findley: Anatomy of a Writer (05/05 6:45PM) and Pinter People (29/04 7:00PM).

-- Focus on Alan Zweig, which includes early short films (30/04 7:15PM), Vinyl (05/05, 9:30PM), Vinyl: The Alternate Take (06/05 9:30PM), A Hard Name (29/04 11:15AM), I, Curmudgeon (03/05 6:45PM), and Lovable (01/05 7:00PM).

For more information on Hot Docs 2011, here is the url: http://www.hotdocs.ca/.

*****On a side note, The National Film Board of Canada has been innovative recently through engaging with what the documentary can be in the age of new digital media. The result is their new Interactive menu. Two of their virtual documentaries include:

-- Highrise, a multi-year, many-media collaborative documentary, which “explores vertical living in the global suburbs.” Directed by Katerina Cizek and produced by Gerry Flahive.

-- Welcome to Pine Point, by The Goggles, which consists of Paul Shoebridge and Michael Simons, is a documentary about the deserted and forgotten townsite of Pine Point, Northwest Territories and their relationship towards it. The inspiration for the project emerged from the website Pine Point revisited.