This week, documentarians of all stripes will descend upon our city to confer about the possibilities of the form through a series of special screenings and workshops.

With such a heady range of unique directors and specialty slices of life on display in their films, it's almost overwhelming and nigh on impossible to single out a series of highlights. But I'll try.

On Nov. 8 at 7 p.m., there will be a screening of elusive filmmaker Peter Watkins' incomparable Punishment Park, a monumentally important document about an almost too-real fascistic state. Captured subversives must contend with all kinds of torture in this ambitious, pioneering 'mockumentary.' Although Watkins won't be here, a 10-page essay he wrote entitled Mockumentary, Documentary, Docudrama and the Media Crisis will be presented and hashed over at a conference on Nov. 9 at 4:30 p.m. It's not to be missed.

Les Blank, the ethnically minded mastermind who trailed Werner Herzog while he made 1982's Fitzcarraldo for his own astonishing film, Burden of Dreams, will return to the city on Nov. 7 to present a rarely screened rockumentary. It's unnamed, but has been called "the greatest rock documentary ever made." Blank's other forays into this particular mode of documentary include 1965's Dizzy Gillespie and 1970's The Blues According to Lightnin' Hopkins, and if this work is even a quarter as good, it'll be a stunning success. Show starts at 9 p.m.

On Nov. 6 at 7 p.m., Hoop Dreams director Steve James will be on hand for the Winnipeg premiere of At the Death House Door, a true crime inquiry into several cases of the death penalty in Huntsville, Texas, that follows 'death house chaplain' Carroll Picket. It's sure to stir emotions and generate discussion, so a post-screening reception at the Platform Centre has been arranged. Admission to the reception is free with your ticket stub.

Forget the recent clichéd American Teen - director Kirby Dick (This Film is Not Yet Rated and Sick: The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermaschosist) got there first with 2001's Chain Camera, a time capsule of 10 students in Los Angeles who were given cameras and asked to film their lives for an entire year (1999). A screening on Nov. 9 at noon will be followed by a workshop.

I Think We're Alone Now, by Sean Donnelly, is probably the most amusingly light doc of the festival, but the concept's still pretty damn creepy.

If the title conjures up images of '80s teen-pop princess Tiffany (and not Tommy James and The Shondells, shame on you), then you'd be right in your supposition, as the film follows two super-obsessed fans as they decode 'secret messages' from the has-been now known as Tiffany Darwisch. The screening is on Nov. 8 at 9 p.m.

Gimme Shelter, also on Nov. 8, will screen at 11 p.m. with a special video introduction by the legendary Albert Maysles.

Appearing in person on Nov. 9 will be director Allan King, the closing night film being his 1967 CBC-commissioned-and-then-dismissed (for being too harrowing) Warrendale. The show starts at 7 p.m.

Also on hand will be directors Yung Chang, Nettie Wild, Zacharias Kunuk, and a host of others.

With such one-of-a-kind events, Gimme Some Truth is hoping to be a yearly occurrence. Let's hope it is.

GIMME SOME TRUTH: THE WINNIPEG DOCUMENTARY PROJECT
Nov. 6-9, Cinematheque