It’s as close to a distillation of the state of documentary - its venerable history, rich personality and financially-barren creativity - as one could hope to find embodied in one interaction in one room. “Everybody thinks it’s easy for me to get money, and it’s not.” “Like everybody else, I need to get money,” Wiseman told me last week in a phone call. Wiseman says Hot Docs reached out to him, and he figured, “Why not?” he says. “Having never had done it before.” He’ll also be in an on-stage conversation Wednesday night, where the Forum will no doubt be discussed. The film he’s pitching is Jackson Heights about new immigrants groups in America, which takes place in Queens, New York. The budget is Wiseman’s standard, he says, but he declines to divulge specifics. “I am looking for production money and to sell the film to television networks,” he says. With a virtual United Nations of television network professionals from around the world crammed into a long gallery room, the Forum has helped around 400 films over the years, including those pitched by other notable directors, including A-listers such as Eugene Jarecki and Morgan Neville. “The value of the forum is even appealing to the master of the form.” “The value we bring to films goes beyond screening them for audiences,” Hot Docs programmer Charlotte Cook said. I get the sense Wiseman is going into it with some measure of piss and vinegar, after hearing him describe how he has “all of three or four minutes” to talk, in addition to a trailer presentation and then the discussion afterwards. “I would hope that at least some of the people have seen one or more of my films,” he says.
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