The Friday Fillip

It’s a big freebie today, a big filmic freebie: HotDocs, the great Canadian documentary film festival, has opened its online library to us all. I count 171 movies for you to choose from, some as short as 6 minutes, others a full hour-and-a-half.

The basic site lets you browse the films sorted by title or by year (1951-2009). And there’s an alternative version of the site done in Flash that lets you filter by subject, time, date and language, or a combination of these facets. As well on the Flash site you can create your own playlists.

What do I recommend? I’ve only just started working through the trove, so I can’t help you out too much here. You might start, though, with one of the short ones — The $4 Haircut — then if you like jazz, there’s Divine Brown at The Rex — and have a look at the charming Daddy Tran and his 3D photography hobby — or just go with the flow and see a list of the most popular films.