
TORONTO and MONTRÉAL — The Canada Media Fund (CMF) today announced a $10.7-million investment through its Pilot Program for Racialized Communities (PPRC) for 19 audiovisual projects by production companies owned and controlled by Black people and people of colour.
“The Pilot Program for Racialized Communities, which forms part of the CMF’s Convergent Stream, recognizes the historic barriers members of equity-deserving communities face and is designed to support the growth of English- and French-language audiovisual production by underrepresented creators,” explains a CMF press release.
“The CMF has made — and will continue to make — every effort necessary to ensure Canada’s racialized storytellers can bring their stories to screens here at home and beyond our borders,” said Tamara Dawit, vice-president of inclusion and growth at the CMF, in the release.
“Providing over $10M in financing for the second year of the Pilot Program for Racialized Communities is an important step towards establishing an equitable funding ecosystem in Canada,” Dawit added.
The PPRC funding is being provided to production companies based in British Columbia, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Québec and Saskatchewan. Twelve of the projects are English-language productions and seven are in French.
The projects are primarily documentaries and dramas, with perhaps the highest-profile project being the Frog Lake Productions series Diggstown, whose fourth season will premiere this fall on CBC.
Other projects receiving production funding include Conquering Lion Pictures’ Half-Blood Blues (a TV adaptation of Esi Edugyan’s novel) and Sahkosh Productions’ Hôtel Beyrouth.
For the full list of projects receiving funding through the CMF’s PPRC, please click here.
The CMF also noted in its press release its Pilot Program for Racialized Communities specific to development and predevelopment opens for applications on Sept. 13, 2022. More information about that is available here.