Nicole Bazuin and Justine Pimlott are the recipients of this year’s DOC Institute Honours. Bazuin will be recognized with the DOC Vanguard Award, while Pimlott will receive the Rogers-DOC Luminary Award. The awards handed out annually by the Ontario chapter of the Ontario chapter of the Documentary Organization of Canada recognize an early to mid-career talent and a veteran of the documentary field, respectively.
Bazuin will receive the DOC Vanguard Award as an emerging talent making a notable contribution to documentary form. Her first feature Modern Whore debuted to great acclaim at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. The inventive hybrid film works in collaboration with writer Andrea Werhun, who shares her experiences as a sex worker and exotic dancer. The film playfully draws upon Werhun’s stories to advocate for the need to consider sex work as deserving of the same labour rights as other professions. The buzzy doc scored Academy Award winner Sean Baker (Anora) as executive producer and was recently tapped for a U.S. premiere at Palm Springs.
“Part of the film’s delightful subversion,” Bazuin told Justine Smith in a story on Modern Whore in our fall issue, “is demonstrating that the sex worker protagonist has meaningful relationships with the people in her life. She has a long-term relationship with a loving partner. She has a mother who loves her. That’s in and of itself groundbreaking because we just do not see sex workers as people who live in community and are loved by the people that are around them.”
Pimlott is a long-time producer in the field whose work has significantly helped to open doors and nurture talent behind the camera from underrepresented communities. She recently ended a long run with the National Film Board of Canada as producer of the acclaimed documentaries The Nest, Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story, A Mother Apart, and Parade: Queer Acts of Love and Resistance. Parade served as the opening night selection for this year’s Hot Docs festival, while Any Other Way won the Rogers Best Canadian Documentary Award from the Toronto Film Critics Association. Prior to her work at the NFB, Pimlott produced several doc with partner Maya Gallus under their indie label Red Queen Productions, including Girl Inside and Derby Crazy Love.
“I love it because I have the wide lens. I’ve got the wide shot,” Pimlott told Susan G. Cole for the cover story of our spring issue when reflecting upon her work as a producer. “The producer can zoom in and be there in the trenches with the director and editor as we figure out the story and the structure but I can also zoom out to get the wider picture. I touch every single person on a production.”
The DOC Institute Honours will be presented to Pimlott and Bazuin on Thursday, December 11. Previous recipients of the Rogers-DOC Luminary Award include Ed Barreveld, Janice Dawe, and Anita Lee, while recent winners of the DOC Vanguard Award include Jules Arita Koostachin, Noura Kevorkian, and Nisha Pahuja.
