Editor

Hot Docs' Board of Directors has selected multi-award winning documentary, producer and broadcast journalist Michael Maclear as the recipient of its annual Outstanding Achievement Award and Retrospective. Mr. Maclear will receive his award at the annual awards presentation during the festival. Always a precise, informed, and thorough journalist, Maclear has produced a distinguished body of informative and factual television over the past five decades. His work ranges from incisive pieces for CBC's legendary Newsmagazine show during its Golden Age in the 50s and 60s, through personal journalistic forays for his show Maclear on CTV in the 70s, to an impressive body of longer, more comprehensive series from the 80s to the present. In the 60s and 70s he spent a considerable amount of time in North Vietnam. Famously, he was the only Western broadcast journalist to cover Ho Chi Minh's funeral. In the early 80s, Mr. Maclear left his position as Executive Producer of CTV's Current Affairs division to create the definitive 13 hour series Vietnam: the 10,000 Day War. A book by Mr. Maclear accompanied this landmark production and it, too, garnered critical acclaim worldwide. Hot Docs will feature a selection of Mr. Maclear's work during the festival, including the theatrical premiere screening of Vietnam: Ghosts of War. Already a three-time broadcast award winner, Mr. Maclear received a special Gemini Award in 2003 for his "Exceptional Contribution to the Canadian Television Industry," and the CFTPA (Canadian Film and Television Producer's Association) gave him their Personal Achievement Award in 1991. Hot Docs is pleased to join those organizations in offering the Outstanding Achievement Award to Mr. Maclear in 2004.