MONTREAL: Over-subscription levels for Licence Fee Program top-up money for Canadian documentaries declined considerably this spring, in dollar terms, to the tune of 7% on the English side and 20% of the French side.

In the spring funding round which makes up 65% of the annual allocation, 202 productions received $23.8 million from the Canadian Television Fund LFP. Approximately 80 productions, mainly in the factual/reality-based series category, received top-ups of $100,000 or more with close to 35 productions receiving $200,000 or more.

This time around, on the English side, LFP managers received 143 project submissions representing $15 million in funding demand, with submissions declining more than 16% compared to last year. Of the total, 131 projects were approved, representing $14.6 million in funds.

On the French side, 95 projects were submitted, an increase of 5.5% over last year, representing $11.5 million in funding demand. Of the total, 71 projects were approved representing funding of $9.2 million. The balance of LFP doc funding, 35%, is set aside for the fall 2001 application period, the submission deadline for which is Oct. 3.

(The Oct. 3 doc deadline is for both LFP and EIP with EIP applications restricted to one-offs and limited series only. Applications will not be accepted until Sept. 1.)

Nineteen English-track POV (‘Creative’) documentary projects received $1.2 million in LFP funds. On the French side, 24 projects received $2.1 million for a combined total of 43 projects and $3.3 million in funding, ‘far surpassing’ LFP’ s annual guaranteed $1.5 million minimum allocation for POV docs.

The fund says a minimum of $525,000 has been set aside for POV applications this fall, $350,000 for English-language projects and $175,000 for French-track projects.

Licences for docs

In the POV category, CBC and affiliated services licensed or shared licences on eight projects. CTV is sharing licences on three projects while specialties Vision TV, Bravo! and WTN are also quite active this spring.

On the French POV side, Tele-Quebec has licensed or is sharing licences on 12 projects, 10 for Radio-Canada – but not counting Tele-des-Arts, which premiers this fall, or Reseau de l’ Information.

In the much larger Factual/Reality-based program category, CBC and affiliated specialties including CBC Newsworld and CBC Regional have licensed 25 projects.

History Television tops all specialties with 17 licences while CTV comes in at nine projects and Global Television Network at four.

On the French side, Canal D tops all licensees with 12 projects while SRC has licensed or is sharing licenses this season on seven projects, one more than Tele-Quebec. Canal Vie has licensed five and TVOntario/TFO have commissioned three shared projects. Among private conventional networks, TQS licensed two projects and Reseau TVA has licensed one.

Big spenders

Some 35 productions received $200,000 or more with the biggest top-ups going to Cineflix’s Birth Stories, $367,848; Ideacom/Creative Anarchy’s six-hour martial-arts culture series Bushido, $450,000; Galafilm/Cirque du Soleil Images’ Cirque du Soleil, $493,196; Cineflix’s on-line dating series e-love, $325,090 and Barna-Alper/Fiddlehead’s Frontiers of Construction, $513,600.

Other big top-up winners include: Little Miracles from Little M Prods. (Breakthrough Films & Television), $386,100; Calgary’s Pyramid Prods’ Movie Central Elite (Corus Premium TV), $346,400; Melanie Adventure Prods.’ (Minds Eye Pictures) My Global Adventure, $330,000; Being Human Prods.’ Skin Deep III, $435,000; and Halifax’s Cochran Entertainment’s 13-episode series Superships, $487,496.

More projects topping the $300,000 level this round are Barna-Alper/Connections Prods’ now familiar Turning Points of History V, $455,000; Yaletown Entertainment’s Weird Wheels II, $338,000, Moncton’s Cinimage Artiste dans l’ame, $371,679; and Ad Hoc Films’ La Boite noire, $300,231.

Rounding out this spring’s winners are Winnipeg’s Productions Rivard’s Canada a la carte, $452,725; Toronto’s Mediatique’s Coup de Theatre, $304,850; Productions Pixcom’s 13-part series Performance, $379,177 and last but definitely the most – Quebec City’s Productions Thalie’s 12-parter Entree cote ‘court’, a cool $824,895.