I’m heading up to HotDocs this weekend to celebrate with Ron Mann, whose work is featured in this year’s Focus On program of a mid-career filmmaker. The retrospective was curated by filmmaker Astra Taylor, whose Examined Life recently made the festival circuit and a wonderful screening in Austin as part of AFS’s Doc Tour. I’m very excited to see Ron and Astra, and hopefully get to see a bit of their Toronto.

I’ll also be moderating a panel on Monday, Creativity in Doc Making at 1 PM on Monday, May 4. Panelists include Jennifer Baichwal, Act of God (Canada), Laura Bari, Antoine (Canada), Peter Liechti, The Sound of Insects: Record of a Mummy (Switzerland) and Menna Laura Meijer, Sweety, The Friends, Betrayal and Murder of Maja Bradaric (Netherlands). I’m excited to watch their films and to think about creativity in doc making. It’s a subject that tends to get overlooked by people who are getting into documentary. They watch a lot of nonfiction television and think that a doc has to follow a certain form while in reality, the best docs push the boundaries of the form. Please stop by if you can!

The Toronto International Film Festival has announced its full slate of documentaries for this year’s incarnation. Seeing the list makes me (again) totally bummed I can’t be there. Doc programmer Thom Powers has once again asked a bunch of us doc folk to contribute our picks for their great doc blog, but to limit our picks to three! Of course, there are more than three that I’d catch if I could. Here are some of my picks beyond those I sent Thom:

It Might Get Loud
By Davis Guggenheim, USA World Premiere
The Academy Award™-winning director of An Inconvenient Truth celebrates the electric guitar by examining the creative process of three virtuosos – Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, The Edge of U2 and Jack White of The White Stripes – including their individual development of songs not yet released.

Examined Life
By Astra Taylor, Canada World Premiere
An intimate and engaging conversation with some of the greatest minds of our era – including Cornel West, Martha Nussbaum, Kwame Anthony Appiah and more – Examined Life conveys the wonderment and curiosity that drives philosophical thought, taking it out of the ivory towers of academia and into the hustle and bustle of the everyday.

The Biggest Chinese Restaurant in the World
By Weijun Chen, China  World Premiere
The director of last year’s crowd-pleaser Please Vote For Me  returns with a look at the West Lake Restaurant in Changsha, China – the world’s largest restaurant. With a staff of nearly 1000 (including 300 chefs) and 5000 seats, West Lake is a combination theme park and eatery, offering a cross section of the country’s changing society.

After the Race
By Nikolaus Geyrhalter, Austria  World Premiere
Following the tracks of the famous Dakar rally, filmmaker Nikolaus Geyrhalter (Our Daily Bread) sets off on a journey from Europe to Africa, documenting European ideas of and prejudices toward Africans, and vice versa.

What are you looking forward to?

It’s hard to really nail down a “festival season” because each season has its festivals, and they each have different goals and audiences. Toronto, running from September 6 – 15, definitely serves as a launching pad for big international films, and with the release of its doc slate, programmed by the inimitable Thom Powers, this year promises to be no exception. On the TIFF Doc Blog (which you might want to bookmark now), Powers asks some fest programmers to share their picks, kicking off with the kool kat Matt Dentler of SXSW.

I second Matt’s choice of Encounters at the End of the World by Werner Herzog. I love Herzog and hate him at the same time, and its delicious. If I were going to the fest, I would also see Parvez Sharma’s film (mostly because Sandi Dubowski is producing and he is a DOLL!!) and the Kevin MacDonald film, just because I’d have to.

But, I’d also call your attention to some interesting picks that might not get the same amount of hype going in, but look really promising:

Body of War
Directed by Phil Donahue and Ellen Spiro, USA
Wounded after serving in Iraq for less than a week, 25-year-old Tomas Young – now paralyzed from the chest down – transforms his personal suffering into political activism, evolving as a powerful voice against the ongoing war. Featuring new music by Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam.

Hollywood Chinese
Directed by Arthur Dong, USA
Punctuated with clips from over 100 movies, Hollywood Chinese offers a captivating revelation on the Chinese in American feature films, from the very first Chinese-American film produced in 1916 to Ang Lee’s triumphant Brokeback Mountain.

Operation Filmmaker
Directed by Nina Davenport, USA
When the dreams of a young Iraqi film student are crushed following the bombing of Baghdad’s film school, actor Liev Schreiber invites him to intern on the production of Everything is Illuminated. But in a comedic turn of events, Schreiber’s good intentions quickly backfire as the eager student proves to have intentions of his own.

Also, I’m ecstatic to see that Why Democracy? is on the slate with Please Vote for Me (pictured above), a charming and funny look at the first elections ever held in China, and Iron Ladies of Liberia, a biopic of Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, the fiesty female President of Liberia.

UPDATE: Thom graciously included me in his call for picks, so I modified my form and added some thoughts, TIFF Picks from Agnes Varnum>>