This year, Hot Docs will present Critical Mass, a new speaker series featuring international critics and media personalities that will take place during this year’s Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, running April 29 to May 9. Critical Mass will pair three high-profile critics in the fields of music, architecture and fashion with Canadian media personalities for three 90-minute conversations about the latest trends and ideas fuelling their field. The Critical Mass speaker series is programmed by Bob Ramsey, Ramsey Inc.
Critical Mass will launch on Saturday, May 1, at 7:00 p.m. at the Al Green Theatre – Miles Nadal Centre with a conversation with Sasha Frere-Jones. A musician and pop-music critic for The New Yorker, Frere-Jones was named one of the top 30 critics in the world by The Economist‘s lifestyle publication, Intelligent Life. His controversial essay “A Paler Shade of White,” which examines the changing role of race in pop-music, generated more response mail for The New Yorker than any essay the magazine had published in the past ten years.
Critical Mass will present an evening with Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic and writer for The New Yorker, Paul Goldberger (pictured here). Goldberger has written The New Yorker‘s celebrated “Sky Line” column since 1997. The author of numerous books on architecture, he began his career at The New York Times, where in 1984 his architecture criticism was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Criticism, the highest award in journalism. Goldberger will be in conversation with host of CBC Radio One’s “The Sunday Edition,” Michael Enright, on Monday, May 3, at 7:00 p.m. at the Al Green Theatre – Miles Nadal Centre.
The speaker series will conclude with guest Robin Givhan, the Pulitzer Prize-winning fashion critic and style writer with The Washington Post, where she covers the news, trends and business of the international fashion industry. Her work is distinguished by the way in which it examines fashion through the lens of popular culture, politics and social anthropology. Givhan received the Eugenia Sheppard award for journalism from the Council of Fashion Designers of America and, in 2006, won the Pulitzer Prize in criticism for her fashion coverage. In 2009, she began covering Michelle Obama and the cultural and social shifts stirred by the first African American family in the White House. Givhan will be interviewed by iconic fashion reporter and host of “Fashion Television,” Jeanne Beker, on Friday, May 7, at 7:00 p.m. inside the University of Toronto’s Hart House.
This is going to be an interesting series. Be sure to make your way to at least one of the sessions. Tickets to each Critical Mass presentation are $12 and can be purchased at the Hot Docs documentary Box Office (Hazelton Lanes, 55 Avenue Road), by phone at 416-637-5150, or online at www.hotdocs.ca.
