On June 25, 2006 I gave a talk at the SHORT FILMS, BIG QUESTIONS: FESTIVALS, POLITICS, AND PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT conference in Pernik, Bulgaria. It was a great academic gathering in a wonderful location that ran in conjunction with the In the Palace International Short Film Festival, an Oscar-qualifying festival in its 23rd year of operation.

I had the opportunity to share with colleagues some of the research from my book project on Hot Docs, and talked about something I don’t usually cover at conferences: shorts at Hot Docs. Crunching the numbers, Hot Docs has shown a lot of short films over its 30+ years of staging the festival – nearly one third of all films shown have been shorts. I showed a graph that visualizes the amount of Canadian vs American shorts, and how this programming runs in contrast to Canadian vs American features, ultimately boosting the overall number of Canadian documentaries the Toronto-based festival reports each year.

It was a lovely event where I was fortunate to reunite with some colleagues while meeting some new friends from across the film festival research field. Looking forward to next year (when I hope to be able to check out some of the film program)!

• Bulgaria
• Conferences
• Film Festivals
• Pernik
• Short Films