By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

Hot Docs 2014 Awards Announced

At a reception hosted by award-winning broadcaster and best-selling author Jian Ghomeshi, host of CBC Radio’s Q, at the Windsor Arms Hotel in Toronto. Thirteen awards and $66,000 in cash and prizes were presented to Canadian and international filmmakers, including awards for Festival films in competition and those recognizing emerging and established filmmakers.

Best Canadian Feature Documentary Award
OUT OF MIND, OUT OF SIGHT (D: John Kastner; P: John Kastner, Deborah Parks, Silva Basmajian; Canada)
Sponsored by the Documentary Organization of Canada, the award includes a $10,000 cash prize courtesy of Hot Docs.
OUT OF MIND, OUT OF SIGHT screens again on Sunday, May 4, at 1:00 pm at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.

Special Jury Prize – Canadian Feature Documentary
BEFORE THE LAST CURTAIN FALLS (D: Thomas Wallner; P: Kerstin Meyer-Beetz; Belgium, Canada, Germany)
Sponsored by the Directors Guild of Canada and DGC Ontario, the award includes a $5000 cash prize courtesy of Hot Docs.

Emerging Canadian Filmmaker Award
Grant Baldwin, JUST EAT IT: A FOOD WASTE STORY

Emerging Canadian Filmmaker Award – Honourable Mention
Amar Wala, THE SECRET TRIAL 5

Best International Feature Documentary Award
WAITING FOR AUGUST (D: Teodora Ana Mihai; P: Hanne Phlypo, Antoine Vermeesch; Belgium)
Sponsored by A&E, the award includes a $10,000 cash prize courtesy of Hot Docs.

Special Jury Prize – International Feature Documentary
WALKING UNDER WATER (D: Eliza Kubarska; P: Monika Braid, Stefan Kloos, Maciej Ostoja-Chyžynski, Filip Kovcien, Eliza Kubarska; Poland, Germany, UK)
Sponsored by the Ontario Media Development Corporation, the award includes a $5000 cash prize courtesy of Hot Docs.
WALKING UNDER WATER screens again on Saturday, May 3, at 9:30 pm at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.

Emerging International Filmmaker Award
Orlando von Einsiedel, VIRUNGA (UK)
VIRUNGA screens again on Saturday, May 3, at 9:30 pm at the Isabel Bader Theatre.

Best Mid-Length Documentary Award
KINGS OF THE WIND & ELECTRIC QUEENS (D: Cédric Dupire, Gaspard Kuentz; P: Jérome Aglibert; France)
Sponsored by the Canada Council for the Arts, the award includes a $3000 cash prize courtesy of Hot Docs.

Best Short Documentary Award
GHOST TRAIN (D: Kelly Hucker, James Fleming; P: James Fleming, Kelly Hucker; Australia)
The award includes a $3000 prize courtesy of Hot Docs.
Hot Docs is an Academy Award® qualifying festival for short documentaries and, as winner of the Best Short Documentary Award, GHOST TRAIN will qualify for consideration in the Documentary Short Subject category of the annual Academy Awards® without the standard theatrical run, provided it complies with Academy rules.

Best Short Documentary – Honourable Mention
BEACH BOY (D: Emil Langballe; P: Emil Langballe; UK, Denmark)

Lindalee Tracey Award
This award honouring an emerging Canadian filmmaker with a passionate point of view, a strong sense of social justice and a sense of humour, was presented to two recipients: Madeleine Grant and Matt Johnson. Each recipient received a $5000 cash prize courtesy of the Lindalee Tracey Fund, $5000 in post-production services from Technicolor, and a beautiful hand-blown glass sculpture by Andrew Kuntz, specially commissioned to honour Lindalee.

2014 Hot Docs Outstanding Achievement Award
Adam Curtis

Don Haig Award
Toronto-based producer Michael McNamara The award includes $5000 cash prize courtesy of the Don Haig Foundation.

Gaiam TV Conscious Media Award
Andrew Napier, MAD AS HELL (USA) Selected by Gaiam TV, the award includes a $5000 cash prize courtesy of Gaiam TV.

2014 Doc Mogul Award
Mette Hoffman Meyer (Commissioning Editor of Documentaries for DR TV, Danish Broadcasting Corporation)

The Audience Award, sponsored by JUST-EAT.ca, and audience top ten favourite films of the 2014 Festival, determined by audience ballot, will be announced on Monday, May 5. Also announced on this day is the Filmmaker-to-Filmmaker Award, determined by ballots cast by Hot Docs 2014 filmmakers.


The 2014 awards for films in competition were determined by four juries.

The Canadian Feature Documentary Jury: Shelley Ambrose (executive director, The Walrus Foundation; publisher, The Walrus magazine), Malcolm Ingram (director, CONTINENTAL, Hot Docs 2013), Stephen Schroeder (executive director, Calgary International Film Festival).

The International Feature Documentary Jury: Anna Eborn (Director, PINE RIDGE, Hot Docs 2014), Gordon Quinn (Artistic Director and Founder, Kartemquin Films), Tom Quinn (Co-President, RADiUS-TWC).

The Mid-Length Jury: Thomas Balmès (Director, HAPPINESS, Hot Docs 2014), Kirsten Johnson (Director, Cinematographer), Maxim Pozdorovkin (Director, THE NOTORIOUS MR. BOUT, Hot Docs 2014).

The Shorts Jury: Jessica Oreck (Director, AATSINKI: THE STORY OF ARCTIC COWBOYS, Hot Docs 2013), Florian Habicht (Director, PULP, Hot Docs 2014), Matthew Hays (Montreal-based critic, author, film festival programmer and university instructor).

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon