Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival

Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival
Location Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Founded 1993 by the Documentary Organization of Canada
Language English
Website http://www.hotdocs.ca

The Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival is North America's largest documentary film festival, conference and market, held annually in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.[1] The 2017 edition of the festival had a record attendance of approximately 215,000 people.[2]

History

Hot Docs was launched in 1993 at the initiative of Wyndham Wise, then executive director of the Canadian Independent Film Caucus, by a team led by Debbie Nightingale. Although not directly related to its precursor, the Grierson Seminar, Hot Docs filled the void it left. For the first five years, Hot Docs served as a promotional vehicle for Caucus filmmakers; however, in 1998, Chris McDonald, formerly of the Canadian Film Centre, was hired as its first full-time employee and the festival was put on a more professional footing. The founding chair of Hot Docs was filmmaker Paul Jay.

As of 2017, the festival screened 230 documentaries from 58 countries. Along with the Canadian and international competitive programs, the festival features The Doc Shop, an international documentary market, and the Hot Docs Pitch Forum (formerly the Toronto Documentary Forum), a limited-seat event which was launched in the year 2000. Since then, the Forum has established itself as North America's essential international documentary market event. The festival has been instrumental as the documentary industry's meeting place with more than 2,000 delegates attending. These delegates include commissioning editors, programmers, filmmakers, buyers and distributors from all over the world. Hot Docs also owns and operates Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema in Toronto.[3]

Audience Favourite award

Each year, the festival presents its Audience Favourite award to one film. In 2014, the award was won by The Backward Class.[4] In 2015, an American film, Unbranded, received the prize.[5]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Etan Vlessing (2011-06-20). "Hot Docs' Top Programmer Sean Farnel Steps Down". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 2011-08-25.
  2. ↑ Peter Howell (2017-05-08). "Rumble takes two top prizes at Hot Docs 2017 film festival". Toronto Star. Retrieved 2017-05-10.
  3. ↑ Thompson, Anne (2017-05-09). "How Hot Docs, North America’s Smartest Festival, Could Anoint an Oscar Winner". IndieWire. Retrieved 2017-05-10.
  4. ↑ "Canada’s The Backward Class is Hot Docs audience favourite".| Toronto Star, 2014-05-05
  5. ↑ Linda Barnard (2015-05-04). "U.S. documentary Unbranded wins audience award at Hot Docs". Toronto Star. Retrieved 2015-05-23.


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.