As April comes to a close, B-Side winds down the biggest month ever for our Festival communities. In addition to major returning partners the Atlanta Film Festival and the Philadelphia Film Festival, this year we added the largest North American doc fest and market, the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival.

This year’s festival has been a huge success so far. According to Variety:

With the number of filmgoers well outstripping projections midway through the fest, organizers expect a more than 25% increase in public attendance by the time Hot Docs, which kicked off April 19 in Toronto, wraps on April 29, with numbers topping out as high as 70,000.

Check out the buzz from the festival on the B-Side community.

In addition to the huge crowds, the B-Side community grabbed Variety’s attention as well:

As with any film fest, technology is increasingly taking a front seat at Hot Docs, and savvy filmmakers and distributors are taking advantage.

Fest organizers inked a deal with Austin, Tex.,-based independent film distributor B-Side Entertainment to supply info on which films were drawing Web site traffic. “The game is to help the festival build buzz and awareness for its programming,” says B-Side principal Jonathan Berkowitz, “and the benefit for us is we get to watch all that happens, and we get a pretty good idea of what films are hot.”

Although it’s just 18 months old, B-Side, which distribs “Before the Music Dies,” has already made similar arrangements with about 40 film festivals across the U.S. and has about 100 more on its dance card for 2007. The Hot Docs deal is one of its largest to date.

Check out the full story on Variety.com.