DOXA FEST Opening/Preview! Heads up, it's going to be great!

DOXA - Documentary Film Festival, April 30-May 10th gave us a fabulous opening celebration and introduction to some of the film makers and upcoming films, Thursday night. (April 9th)  Held at the offices of Hootsuite on 8th, the event was catered by Truffles and featured all kinds of your favorite appies, plus exotic fruit and vegies, centred like colorful foody sculptures on all of the tables. DOXA is moving to its new office at 750 Hamilton soon, but this was a fabulously friendly, gorgeous venue to kick off what promises to be an vast array of choices for everyone.

The festival is now longer, 11 days, and is held at different sites: Vancity Theatre, Cinematheque, Playhouse, SFU's Goldcorp Centre for the Artstand The Post at 750 Hamilton Street (@Robson St).

We met Kenji Maeda, Executive Director and Director of Programming, Dorothy Woodend.  This is the year of the subversive in DOXA films.  And, as always, there are films where age, ethnicity, language, culture, city, country and world play starring roles.  There are films by first timers and films by seasoned pro's. Thierry Garrel, curator of FRENCH, FRENCH, spoke about the new French documentaries and showed clips from Spartacus and Cassandra by Ioanis Nuget, France, 2014.

It was nice to see Marnie Wilson/The Artsbiz Public Relations/ acknowledged for her ll years as DOXA'S Media Relations go to expert. DOXA wouldn't work without its huge, hard working team and we certainly saw that example of 'engagement' last night.

We began with brief but powerful clips from "How To Change The World" (Formation of Greenpeace) by Jerry Rothwell, Canada/UK, 2015 and ended with IRIS, by Albert Maysles, USA, 2014 as well as others. So engaging people and engaging films; last night was about getting ready for the best documentaries ever, meeting the people who bring these worlds to us, and journeying with them. "The eye has to travel", according to Diana Vreeland and I am definitely buying tickets for the DOXA experience.  For more information go to www.doxafestival.ca

Thanks all!