A federal government funding cut of $205,000 has forced the Canadian Screen Training Centre in Ottawa to close its doors permanently.

Executive director Tom Shoebridge, who founded the CSTC in 1981, said a combined $2.5 million cut by the federal government in August 2008 to four national training schools, including his own, led to the pending closure.

‘The CSTC has been struggling to find replacement funding since there was a 100% cut to the federal core funding for all the national film schools… It proved to be the death knell for a small organization like the CSTC,’ Shoebridge said. (Know more? Email us!)

Also impacted by the loss of the National Training Program, as of April 1, 2009, was the Canadian Film Centre, the National Screen Institute and l’Institut national de l’image et du son.

Around 7,000 students passed through the screen-training center in its 29 years, where they received instruction from, among others, Megan Follows, Atom Egoyan, Patricia Rozema, Peter Raymond, Sarah Polley and Denys Arcand.