Here’s a useful life raft for struggling Canadian filmmakers: Astral Media’s The Harold Greenberg Fund last year invested $3.4 million in Canadian film, much of it seed capital to get projects off the ground in a crisis-era global film business.

The Greenberg fund’s annual report for 2009-10 reveals many of the films it got behind were intimate dramas by Canadian women now seizing the international spotlight: Kari Skogland’s Prisoner of Tehran, Sarah Polley’s Take This Waltz, and Catherine Martin’s Trois temps après la mort d’Anna.

As American and other international producers scrambled for cash during the recession to make films, and European film budgets start to tumble during the EU financial crisis, the Greenberg fund continues to hand out coin to more commercial fare aimed at the local multiplex.

That includes backing last year for Michael Dowse’s Fubar 2, Michael McGowan’s Score: A Hockey Musical, which opened the Toronto International Film Festival, Rob Stefaniuk’s Suck and award-winner The Whistleblower (pictured), by Larysa Kondracki.

On the English language side, the Greenberg fund committed $1.7 million to 74 projects, with 51% of financing going to equity investments in film, 32% to script development and 6% to story optioning.

On the French language film front, $1.7 million in coin was handed out to 101 projects, including Piché: Entre ciel et terre, produced by Sylvain Archambault and Denis Villeneuve’s Quebec box office winner Incendies.

The fund’s backing in many cases was crucial to filling the gap between raised money and a film’s total budget, so producers could move into production.

The continued investment from the Greenberg fund is underpinned by the on-going success of Canada pay TV market.

The equity investment program is funded by 5% of gross revenues from Viewers Choice. There’s also an annual $1 million contribution from The Movie Network for the script development fund.