OTTAWA — Astral Media will make $585,000 available to documentary makers early next year, thanks to its takeover of Standard Radio.

When it bought Standard last year, Astral assumed the company’s remaining commitment to produce music-related doc programming. Now it has to disperse this money itself, funneling it through The Harold Greenberg Fund.

Fund president John Galway says the $585,000 will be offered to independent doc film producers — with a Western Canadian focus — who want to do feature-length documentaries with music-related themes.

The films ‘can be either concerning an artist or a particular musical form, or also the culture of that music or the fans or some form of experience that involves music,’ Galway told Playback Daily, speaking from the Vancouver International Film Festival, where the funding was announced.

He added that ‘the hope is that TMN [The Movie Network] will have a first look at the material and hopefully license it’ with an eye towards theatrical release. TMN is also owned by Astral.

This venture marks the first time that The Harold Greenberg Fund will offer money to documentary producers. Since its founding in 1986, it has focused on funding for feature film dramas. However, there is no guarantee that Greenberg will do more doc funding once this $585,000 is gone, Galway says, so money-minded producers would be well to get their applications in fast. He expects that $585,000 is sufficient to ‘trigger two to three docs.’

The forms can be found online at www.astralmedia.com.