CBC’s documentary channel is one of five lead sponsors of the 2013 Hot Docs Festival – celebrating it’s 20th Anniversary this year. To mark the festival documentary channel has planned HOT DOCS WEEK, a special week of award-winning documentaries, running from Sunday April 21 – 28 nightly.
CBC’s documentary channel has five titles premiering this year at the festival – taking place April 25–May 5 in Toronto. The opening night film is The Manor, while The Ghosts In Our Machine, Last Woman Standing, Not Criminally Responsible and Fight Like Soldiers, Die Like Children are screening throughout the festival. For tickets, visit the Hot Docs Box Office sponsored by documentary channel located at 87 Avenue Road — Hazelton Lanes, lower level. More details on upcoming broadcasts will follow as these original productions roll out on documentary channel in the coming months.
In March, documentary channel and Hot Docs announced changes to the prize structure of the Don Haig Award – presented annually by documentary. This year, a $10,000 award goes to an outstanding Canadian independent producer with a feature-length film in the festival and the $10,000 Emerging Canadian Filmmaker Award that recognizes excellence and promise in up-and-coming documentary filmmakers.
HOT DOCS WEEK on documentary programming highlights include:
Under Fire: Journalists in Combat
Sunday, April 21 at 8 p.m. ET
Winner of a 2012 Peabody Award and short-listed for a 2012 Academy Award, commissioned by documentary channel explores the dangers and the effects of war — both physically and psychologically — on those who report the news from the world’s most dangerous places. The film shows the lingering human price, long after the battles are forgotten, of bringing the news to the comfortable regions of the world.
War journalism has become an increasingly lethal endeavor. Not only are correspondents viewed as targets, they are often subject to kidnappings, torture and even beheadings. Canadian director Martyn Burke weaves together a comprehensive and incisive look at post-traumatic stress disorder and how it affects journalists in war zones.
Winnebago Man
Sunday, April 21 at 10 p.m. ET
Type “The Angriest Man in the World” into any search engine, and one name appears — Jack Rebney, a.k.a. “The Winnebago Man” — an ‘80s RV salesman whose hilarious, profanity-strewn, on-the-job meltdown was captured on video and passed around on VHS tapes before exploding into an internet phenomenon seen by millions. Filmmaker Ben Steinbauer goes in search of the infamous viral video star and discovers him living a hermit-like existence on top of a mountain, unaware of his fame. This film is an outrageously funny and unexpectedly redemptive tale of one man’s response to unintended celebrity, and proof that the truth is both stranger and funnier than fiction.
Heist: Who Stole the American Dream?
Friday, April 26 at 10 p.m. ET
Heist: Who Stole the American Dream? reveals how American corporations orchestrated the dismantling of middle-class prosperity through rampant deregulation, the outsourcing of jobs, and tax policies favoring businesses and the wealthy. The collapse of the U.S. economy is the result of conscious choices made over the course of 35 years by a small group: leaders of corporations and their elected allies, and the biggest lobbying interest in Washington: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. To these individuals, the collapse is not a catastrophe, but rather the planned outcome of their long, patient work. For the rest of the country, it is merely the biggest heist in American history.
Harlan: In The Shadow of Jew Suss
Saturday, April 27 at 8 p.m. ET
Though almost forgotten today, Veit Harlan was one of Nazi Germany’s most notorious filmmakers. Millions of people across occupied Europe saw his films, the most perfidious of which was the anti-Semitic propaganda film Jew Süss, required viewing for all SS members. An unrepentant and blindly obsessive craftsman, no figure — save for Leni Riefenstahl — is as closely associated with the cinema of the Holocaust years as that of Joseph Goebbels’ top director.
Time Zero: The Last Year of Polaroid Film (documentary Première)
Sunday, April 28 at 10 p.m. ET
In February 2008, Polaroid announced that it was ceasing production of instant film. Time Zero tells the story of the last year of Polaroid film in three acts. Act I introduces the “magic” of Polaroid through the perspective of Polaroid artists and former employees of the corporation. Act II begins with the discontinuation of instant film and covers the grassroots movement to keep it alive. Act III centres on “The Impossible Project” and follows their against-the-odds effort to reinvent instant film.
