Hot Docs 2009

Hot Docs is pleased to present Doc It!, a showcase for young filmmakers aged 14-18 to exhibit their short works at the Festival. A complementary initiative to the highly-successful Docs for Schools programme, Doc It! stimulates non-fiction filmmaking among youth, and provides a forum for their perspectives on their experiences and on their understandings of their world. All selected works are eligible to win juried prizes and the Doc It! Audience Award, determined by an audience ballot.

This year’s Doc It! showcase features:

Chills and Thrills: Looking at the Horror Genre
D: Madelaine Edmonds | Canada | 6 MIN
CHILLS AND THRILLS explores common elements of horror films, the entertainment appeal, why horror films are so popular and what impacts these films have on society through interviews with viewers and industry insiders.

Concrete Poetry
D: Kaelee Malcolm | Canada | 6 MIN
CONCRETE POETRY acknowledges break-dancing as a valuable, recreational deterrent for youth violence, and challenges stereotypes surrounding break-dance culture by focusing on a group of dedicated dancers who have made it their lifestyle.

Genderpunk
D: Claro Cosco | Canada | 9 MIN
GENDERPUNK documents a teenage transboy’s struggles to make sense of personal questions of gender, boyhood, and the nature of identity. Taking the form of a video journal, it uses fractured narrative and imagery to explore the limitations of mainstream notions of gender and identity.

Hartmops1
D: Richard Schwarz, Lothar Schmiermann, Roka Kahlo | Germany | 9 MIN
The film is a visual essay to music that chronicles three youth on a mission to spray graffiti all over the city.

Len, Sit Down
D: Jacob Yanowski | USA | 10 MIN
Leon Despres, a Chicago Alderman from 1955 to 1975 challenged the corrupt Richard J. Daley “Machine”… alone. Now 98, Leon Despres is still fighting for equal justice for all citizens of Chicago.

Life With Mom
D: Jefferson Moore-Bellerande | Canada | 10 MIN
Living in a single-mother household, the filmmaker beats the stereotype that all kids who live with just their mother can’t do well, proving that one can overcome the odds and succeed in life.

Sent to the Right
D: Chloe Rash | Canada | 8 MIN
SENT TO THE RIGHT investigates the Holocaust’s effects on all generations directly and indirectly linked to the experience of survival through interviews with survivors and their children.

Uniform or Not?
D: Andrew Keatings, Steven La, Theo Nanos | Canada | 7 MIN
The film examines the impact of uniforms on the student body and the teachers who have to enforce the overwhelmingly unpopular school policy. A candid and revealing exploration of the unique uniform situation that exists at Woodbridge College in Toronto.

Whale Sharks of Holbox
D: Michael Wham | USA | 5 MIN
The islanders of Holbox, Mexico, facing a dwindling supply of fish, have successfully converted their economy to ecotourism. In doing so, they have helped protect the world’s largest fish, the whale shark.