Astral Media’s evolution into a pure-play media company in the last decade has paid dividends for French-language film and TV producers in the form of Le Fonds Harold Greenberg, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year as the English stream fetes its 20th.

Situated within a funding mix along with public agencies – chiefly Telefilm Canada and SODEC – and other private funders, the Montreal-based Le Fonds has, since 1996, supported 33 Quebec feature films. It can share some of the credit for helping fuel Quebec’s recent feature film boom, investing in well-received hits such as Denys Arcand’s Les Invasions barbares, Jean-Marc Vallée’s C.R.A.Z.Y. and Louise Archambault’s Familia.

But Odile Méthot, who helped get Le Fonds off the ground in 1996 and became its president and managing director in 2000, insists the fund looks to help finance more than just potential crowd-pleasers.

‘We don’t make decisions necessarily on box office,’ she says. ‘If we feel the producer needs the money to do a better movie, we’ll get behind them.’

According to Méthot, Le Fonds’ program committee looks primarily for scripts with good stories that will likely get produced and released into the marketplace. If the subsequent films deliver standing ovations at festivals or big hauls at the box office, all the better.

Program committee members and outside consultants read each script submitted to Le Fonds, and all report back to the board of directors, which makes all funding decisions.

The fund annually invests up to $100,000 in each of five or so movies – a modest sum in a film’s overall budget, but one likely to help producers retain more equity in their projects, according to Le Fonds chair Rock Demers.

‘If you can bring $100,000 to a film, that might help the producer not have to borrow further to complete financing or put the money in himself,’ says Demers, also a producer at Montreal’s La Fête Productions. ‘And if the film succeeds, the producer has more money to plough back into future projects.’

In a climate where domestic financing for Canadian movies has shrunk in recent years, private funds like Le Fonds have become an increasingly important lifeline for Quebec producers.

The first feature to benefit from Le Fonds equity was André Forcier’s 1997 fantasy comedy La Comtesse de Baton Rouge, a 10-time Genie Award nominee about the romance between a filmmaker and a bearded lady at a circus sideshow.

Other early projects receiving Le Fonds equity include Léa Pool’s Emporte-moi (winner of four Prix Jutra) and Richard Ciupka’s thriller Nazareth USA, as well as TV programs generated by Montreal’s Juste pour rire comedy festival.

By the late 1990s, other successful Quebec movies that would tap Le Fonds include Robert Favreau’s drama Les Muses orphelines, Denise Filiatrault’s popular comedy sequel Laura Cadieux… la suite and Michel Jetté’s biker thriller Hochelaga.

Upcoming fall releases with Le Fonds equity include Jean Beaudin’s family tale Sans elle and Patrice Sauvé’s gritty underworld drama Cheech.

From the start, Le Fonds generated recoupments, enabling reinvestment in the private industry fund. The downside of Quebec cinema’s recent success, however, is that it has led to increased demand for Le Fonds equity.

‘There are many more requests than before, and that makes our decision-making process even more difficult,’ Demers explains. ‘There are more scripts, but not more producers who have enough money to complete their projects.’

Le Fonds enables producers to access financing in eight streams, which are broken down by project type and, in the case of feature films, into separate streams for story optioning, script development and equity investment in production. The money derives from revenues from specialty channels with licences Astral has either acquired or amended over the past decade, including Family Channel, Historia (half-owned by Alliance Atlantis) and Z Télé.

Producers applying for Le Fonds investment typically require a first-window licence from a private Canadian specialty or pay-TV channel, which is often Astral-owned Super Écran. It is precisely after securing a licence fee when producers are most active in pursuing project financing – and that’s when finding it may prove most difficult, says Méthot.

Le Fonds launched in 1996 with its feature film equity investment initiative after Astral’s acquisition of Canal Indigo, a pay-per-view service offering movies, sports and adult programs. Astral pledged to invest 5% of the channel’s gross revenues into feature film production.

The fund also invested in special event programming at the outset. It expanded in 2000 to support documentaries, music programs and music videos after Astral acquired lifestyle and music specialties as part of its takeover of rival Radiomutuel.

The following year, Le Fonds started helping underwrite youth-themed dramas with money from Family Channel after Astral assumed full ownership of that specialty by buying out Corus Entertainment’s 50% share. The script development and story optioning streams came aboard in 2002 with cash from Super Écran after the pay-TV channel’s licence renewal.

In 2004, Le Fonds got into the script development business by partnering with SODEC in support of Atelier Grand Nord, a scriptwriting workshop for French feature film scribes from Quebec, France, Belgium and Switzerland.

In its 10 years, Le Fonds has backed Quebec producers with $9.6 million for projects, that, in addition to feature productions, include 65 documentaries, 63 script development projects, 41 story optioning programs, 21 videoclips, 14 special event shows, six youth drama programs and five musical programs. The fund’s annual investment has grown from around $250,000 in its first year to around $1.5 million.

Long-standing members of Le Fonds’ program committee include Louise Baillargeon, a former ctf svp, Astral Media executives Judith Brosseau and Johanne Saint-Laurent, and industry consultant Michel Houle. The late Louise Spickler, GM of the Institut national de l’image et du son, also sat on Le Fonds’ programming committee. Isabelle Touchette serves as coordinator, administration and financing program.

www.astral.com/fr/lefondsharoldgreenberg