Hot Docs has $40,000 for best Canadian pitch

Hot Docs, Toronto's annual festival of documentary film, is offering a new $40,000 grant to the best Canadian pitch at this year's Toronto Documentary Forum.

The forum, an international marketplace for the documentary industry held at the Toronto festival, allows filmmakers to rub shoulders from producers from around the world.

The best pitch award is part of the Canwest-Hot Docs Fund created last year to increase the quantity and quality of Canadian documentaries.

That fund has already handed out $584,000 to Canadian documentary makers.

Participants, to be selected by a group of industry professionals, will have 15 minutes to present their pitch to assembled financiers on May 6 and 7.

Hot Docs will also host the Good Pitch, a project by Britain's Channel 4 and Sundance to link documentary makers interested in social change with others who might have the same interests.

The pitch process links filmmakers with NGOs, charities, ad agencies and media, as well as other potential sources of financing, to work toward a common goal.

The Good Pitch was created three years ago in Britain as a way of creating a market for films that would inspire people to give money, change laws or influence others.

"Films are the best medium for changing hearts, minds and lives, by bringing stories and issues to the widest possible audiences," the Good Pitch website says. "Films inspire people to engage; with the characters, with the stories, with the issues."

The Good Pitch is making its first tour of North America with the Sundance Institute and Hot Docs is its first stop.