What a great week at Hot Docs. First of all, it didn’t rain nearly as much as it was supposed to. Some HotDocs highlights:
-Laura Bari’s ANTOINE and Yung Chang’s ALI SHAN both premiered to great acclaim. Great Skype Introduction by Antoine himself at the Royal.
-Wim Wenders spent the day on Sunday helping turn Fruit Hunters into a film
-Toronto Documentary Forum (hosted for the first time by Elizabeth Radshaw – great job) in which we had an installation of Brett’s opensourcecinema.org and showed filmmakers how to use our collaborative website.
-Yung Chang (pitching his Fruit Hunter film) waited until the final sunny afternoon of the TDF to set out a tray of Miracle fruit (the fruit that tricks your tongue into thinking everything sour is sweet) and lemons for the TV folks. We convinced many broadcasters to try the fruit, except, oddly, the people from at the Nature of Things.
-We had a great EyeSteelFilm party at Omar and Azed Majeed’s BASEMENT space. In lovely east Toronto (perfect for weeding out the non-adventurous).
-Mitch, Will, Dan, Brett, Yung all pitched new films.
-I saw two great films at the festival: OLD PARTNER and ENJOY POVERTY.
-And to cap it off, Brett Gaylor won the Don Haig Award, and Will Inrig and Laura Bari shared the Lindalee Tracy award. Congrats!
As Daniel Cross gets deeper into the realm of the regal on his diplomatic mission to Norway, his posts get more and more cryptic. from the Royal Palace:
“I met the king and queen of Norway and all the princes and princesses tonight – i hip checked the prince to keep him in line – couldnt help it wood floors leather shoes – playoffs”
And that’s pretty much all he’s said so far about meeting the King and Queen of Norway. Tune in for more details!
