The Images media festival arrives two weeks ahead of Hot Docs every year, and I love that contrast: While there’s always some documentary programming in Images, it’s always stylized or skewed in some way as to set it apart from the flood of more conventional filmmaking that will follow.

Anyway, it always works out that the Images stuff will arrive a week or so after I’ve started into my Hot Docs screeners, so it feels like a welcome break to pull my head out of one stream and immerse it entirely into the other.

In this week’s NOW, I look at Images (which kicks off tonight with a gallery crawl), and next week we’ll get the ball rolling on Hot Docs. Whee!