Projects Chosen for Funding from Canwest-Hot Docs

TORONTO, December 19: In
its second round of selections, Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary
Festival and Canwest have chosen nine projects to receive a total of $246,000
in grants and no-interest loans from the Canwest-Hot Docs Documentary Funds.

A total of 31 eligible
projects were considered by the Canwest-Hot Docs Completion Fund Selection
Committee. Five completion grants, totaling $186,000, were awarded. Recipients
include Harmless, a film about
older men and women who have spent much of their lives in and out of prison; Land, which depicts the age-old fight between Pueblo
and Imperialistas; Manners Maketh Men, about the emotional cost of growing up male and privileged; The
Man Who Saved Geometry, looking at
the legacy of Donald Coxeter, a professor at the U of T; and The Birth of
Punk Islam, the story of the three
unlikely rebels who started a new subculture.

A total of 45 eligible
projects were considered by the Canwest-Hot Docs Development Fund Selection
Committee. Four no-interest loans, totaling $60,000, were awarded. Projects
selected were Edges of Love, a
vérité style documentary that follows five couples whose relationships have
reached the proverbial seven-year itch; Pedophile?, a documentary about child pornography; Tiananmen
Square 20 Years Later, a feature
doc on the stories of the student leaders who escaped abroad after the
crackdown in 1989; and When I Walk,
in which a 30-year-old film director shares his experience with having
progressive Multiple Sclerosis.

These nine projects join
those selected in September, during the first round of funding applications, as
the complete selection of recipients of funds for 2008.

—By Kristin
Brzoznowski