Astral Media The Harold Greenberg Fund is pleased to announce the launch of a new documentary fund during the Vancouver International Film Festival's Film & Television Forum. The new fund of $585,000 will target independent documentary film producers with a Western Canadian focus. The envelope of money for investment in documentary filmmaking that will be managed by The Harold Greenberg Fund has been allocated from residual obligations from the benefits associated with the Standard Radio/Telemedia transaction.

"We are very enthusiastic about this new fund," said John Galway, President of the Harold Greenberg Fund. "Documentary filmmaking has its unique challenges and methodology and financing is often a challenge. We are therefore very pleased to be able to provide some assistance to producers working in this genre." He added, "The Harold Greenberg Fund has traditionally been associated with dramatic feature film financing and this new direction gives us the opportunity to apply our well-honed operating principles to support filmmaking in Canada in a whole new way."

With the limited scope of the funds available, the objective of the new documentary fund is to be able to support two to three high-quality feature length documentary projects that will be selected from a single review process and which will have the potential to be aired on multiple media platforms. To respect the spirit of the initial commitment by Standard Radio, the documentaries should have a subject matter focus that emphasizes music in some manner. As a recognized Independent Production Fund, with an established investment process for Canadian film production, The Harold Greenberg Fund will launch the process with an initial application deadline in January 2009.

Astral Media The Harold Greenberg Fund/Le Fonds Harold Greenberg is a national funding organization established to contribute to the development and production of high-calibre film and television productions. Supported by Astral Media, The Fund/Le Fonds has invested over $66 million in the Canadian film and television industry since its inception in 1986. For more information, please visit www.astralmedia.com/TheFund.