The Revival, Toronto, April 8|The swellegant club/restaurant Revival, with its yellow-brick interiors and Japanese-paper chandeliers, was the appropriately modern setting for the unveiling of the 2002 Hot Docs festival line-up. As the press gallery filtered in (after a stop at the food table), the programmers gravitated towards the mic and announced program highlights culled from the 104 documentaries on offer in their expanded ten-day event, which runs from April 26th to May 5th.
Of special interest amongst the programs is the retrospective of Inuit director Zacharias Kunuk. A wide body of short works that document, and hope to strengthen, the Inuit way of life represents Kunuk, who shot to fame after winning the Camera d'Or at last year's Cannes festival. Included is the acclaimed Quaggiq ("Gathering Place"), which centres on negotiations between two families on a marriage, and Nipi ("Voice"), which explores, on the eve of Nunavut's birth, the challenges faced in asserting Inuit control over the region.
Also attending the festival is vérité master Frederick Wiseman. Wiseman achieved notoriety through his suppressed asylum documentary Titicut Follies and quickly established himself as a constant and controversial eye on various institutions and social systems in such films as Welfare, Juvenile Court, and Hospital. Already being celebrated by a retrospective at Cinematheque Ontario, he will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award on May 5th and attend screenings of his Law and Order, Titicut Follies, and Domestic Violence.
In the National Spotlight this year is Germany, whose subjects run from the sublime to the bizarre. Absolut Warhola tells the story of the Eastern European town of Medzilaborce, unlikely home of an Andy Warhol museum; Black Box Germany, an account of ultra-left terrorism in the '70s and '80s; Marlene Dietrich: Her Own Song, on the eponymous superstar's wartime experiences (and resistance of Nazi advances); and Missing Allen, a eulogy to documentarian Allen Ross and an investigation into his disappearance.
All of this is in addition to the wide array of Canadian and international films and videos that Hot Docs exists to present. No stone is left unturned in its wide programs, from the environmental investigations of opening-night film Blue Vinyl to the cinematic hopefuls of closing-night film Bollywood Bound; an Amish rite of passage in Devil's Playground and a gross miscarriage of justice in The Execution of Wanda Jean; an exploration of Marshall McLuhan in McLuhan's Wake and a man afflicted with Tourette's in Life's a Twitch; and so on. In addition, there will be a program of films for young people; a master class with Wiseman and Allan King; and Cyberdocs, "a curated exhibition of interactive documentary works."
