Blue Ice Group Invests in Hot Docs Fund for African Filmmakers

TORONTO: Blue Ice Group has renewed its support for the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, adding C$1.25 million ($871,000) toward a special fund to help finance African filmmakers.

The Hot Docs-Blue Ice Group Documentary Fund was established to help enable more African documentary filmmakers to tell their own stories and contributes to the professional development of the African documentary community’s next generation. The Blue Ice Group has invested C$2.35 million ($1.64 million) in the fund since 2011. To date, it has awarded grants to 40 projects from 15 countries, as well as travel, accommodation and accreditation support to attend the Hot Docs Festival and Hot Docs-Blue Ice Group Filmmakers Lab, and the Durban International Film Festival and Durban FilmMart.

“With the Blue Ice Group’s generous investment, Hot Docs is honored to continue our efforts to finance and support documentary filmmakers and their films across the African continent,” said Michael McMahon, the Hot Docs board of directors co-chair.

“It has been such a pleasure dealing with Hot Docs, and so rewarding interacting with the incredibly creative African documentarians through this fund, that we have decided to renew it for a further five years,” said Blue Ice Group co-founders Steven Silver and Neil Tabatznik.