Filmmakers looking for financial assistance in promoting their projects just got another option, as the Harold Greenberg Fund announced late yesterday the launch of its inaugural Marketing Program.

The new program will support three Canadian feature film projects that have been accepted to major international film festivals, providing up to $10,000 per selected project. Eligible projects may have Canadian distributor support for domestic release, but they must lack a foreign sales agent.

“We want to give opportunities to films that aren’t the Barney’s Versions,” Alan Bacchus, the Fund’s business affairs specialist, tells Playback Daily. “Sometimes the smaller ones we support need an extra boost to get out there.”

The Fund also hopes to expand the program going forward to include phases for projects in production and to promote films prior to, and during, their release.

Submissions, which should include a full marketing plan, will be evaluated by an internal team including the HG Fund, The Movie Network and HBO Canada.

Bacchus encourages filmmakers to be creative in their submissions, the only restrictions being that the goal and execution of the marketing strategy must be clear, and the plan must include elements targeting foreign and domestic distributors, as well as the movie-going public.

“We’re making an open canvas for people to come up with all kinds of ideas,” he says. “We didn’t want to put it into a box and have specific rules on what people could do and couldn’t do.

The Marketing Program is the first of four new initiatives supported by the Fund’s Industry Initiatives Program, with the remaining three to be announced in September.

The initiatives are also part of the Harold Greenberg Fund’s 25^th anniversary activities.

For more information and guidelines, click here.