Montreal: Apart from some kind of required correlation to the arts, Bravo!FACT is arguably the most wide open of the national production funding programs. The foundation provides grants of up to $25,000 to established directors seeking creative relief as well as to emerging talents looking for a start.

The foundation recently announced funding support for two dozen new projects, ranging from animation shorts to spoken-word essays and classical, hip-hop and indigenous dance videos.

Exec director Judy Gladstone is especially proud Bravo!FACT (Foundation to Assist Canadian Talent) came up with some timely cash for Jesse Rosensweet’s stop-motion animation film The Stone of Folly, Prix du Jury winner at this year’s Cannes International Film Festival (See Animation & SFX Report, p. 21).

She says the program provided $1.3 million in production grants to more than 100 projects in 2001/02, and $6 million to more than 600 productions across the country since its launch in 1994.

Higher-profile Bravo!FACT-funded shorts in post or distribution include Bruce McDonald’s The Interview, based on the Anne Carson poem; Canadian Film Centre recruit director Alex Franchi’s Mozart aria Fata Morgana, starring diva Nathalie Choquette; Douglas Bensadoun’s At the Quinte Hotel, adapted from the Al Purdy poem and marking the acting debut of Tragically Hip front man Gord Downie; and Rina Fraticelli’s and David McIlwraith’s Iron Hill, featuring Toronto dancer Peggy Baker.

For more details and the list of projects accepted June 4, go to www.bravofact.com or www.maxfact.org.

Leo Rice-Barker