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Albert Maysles will speak as part of a master class on Saturday.

The documentary, Canadian filmmaker and Manufacturing Consent co-director Peter Wintonick told Uptown last year, is our country’s "most important cultural export." That’s appropriate: after all, according to local documentarian Kristin Tresoor, Canada invented it.
   
While the doc’s roots are traceable to cinema’s infancy, Canada’s National Film Board "was essential to its coming into being," says Tresoor, who’s produced docs for CTV and the CBC and is a programming committee member for Gimme Some Truth, the now-annual Winnipeg documentary forum that enjoys its fourth manifestation this week.
   
As the modern doc evolved, she continues, it was several Quebec masters who "revolutionized filmmaking.
   
"Things like the hand-held camera and sync sound in documentaries — these are taken for granted now," Tresoor says of the NFB’s French Unit, home to the so-called Cinema Direct movement in Canada, which focused on everyday subjects and people.
   
These filmmakers will be recognized Friday as part of the program Quebec Masters: Cinema Direct, curated by Tresoor and highlighting the likes of Claude Jutra (best known for drama Mon Oncle Antoine), and Arthur Lamothe, who will take part in a panel discussion.
   
Dovetailing with that is Sunday evening’s St. Boniface Shorts program, featuring Winnipeg auteur Stephane Oystryk’s 177, boulevard Dollard (which is also part of tonight’s opening-night screening alongside seminal 1975 doc Grey Gardens).
   
For a 90-second film, Oystryk’s has grabbed a fair share of recent attention: CBC Radio-Canada has interviewed the filmmaker repeatedly about his film’s implications for St. Boniface. A "kind of poetic visual ode" to Oystryk’s grandparents’ old house, the film questions whether the community’s "official" sloganeering ("C’est si bon!") reflects anything of existing Franco-Manitoban culture.
   
Like the work of the Quebec masters, it’s about real life in a real community, now.
   
And, Oystryk adds, it will hopefully "get people thinking about what’s going on around them.
   
"What was really exciting was to find out that my opinion was shared by so many others and that people felt passionately about the subject," he says of the media flutter.
   
The film is not "a traditional documentary by any means," he continues — more of "an opinion piece or a video diary." Nonetheless, certain constants of documentary filmmaking apply, in contrast to Oystryk’s dramatic shorts.
   
"So much of the creativity comes into play in the post-production phase — the editing is the writing, in a sense."
   
The attention won by 177, boulevard Dollard also reflects the more saleable nature of the short doc. "In my experience, our member filmmakers have made more revenue on docs than dramas," says Monica Lowe, distribution services manager for the artist-run Winnipeg Film Group. (This year’s forum features a master class on the same subject.)
   
There’s more: in what amounts to a coup, says Tresoor, 85-year-old Grey Gardens director Albert Maysles will speak as part of a master class on Saturday. Here in its geographical centre, the foundations of one of Canada’s definitive cultural traditions are being reinforced.
   
Gimme Some Truth takes place Oct. 13 to 16; for complete information and schedules of screenings, workshops, panels and talks, visit gimmesometruth.ca.

GIMME SOME TRUTH
Oct. 13 – 16, Cinematheque