MONTREAL – Telefilm Canada has expanded the eligibility criteria for its Development Program to support its objective of achieving a representative and diversified feature film portfolio by 2020.
According to the news release, the changes include:
– Women have been identified as a targeted group: to support its objective of achieving a portfolio of projects that reflects gender parity by 2020, production companies submitting women-led projects will now have access to additional development funds.
– Production companies that have already produced a film under the Micro-Budget Production Program are now eligible: provides additional support to emerging talent with demonstrated expertise.
– Now open to creators who have already produced a theatrically released documentary: provides additional support to the documentary filmmaking community. Telefilm Canada more than doubled its investment in documentary films in 2017, for a total of $1.7 million.
– New support for British Columbia: additional support is now available for creators from British Columbia, thanks to a joint initiative with Creative BC. For production companies from the province that receive less than $30,000 in development.
– Streamlined application process: for the first time ever the program, which opened its doors July 4, will be administered on Telefilm’s new application management platform Dialogue, that is gradually replacing eTelefilm. Dialogue is a collaborative cloud-based environment that simplifies and expedites the application process.
“The Development Program is a crucial first step to achieving a diversified slate of Canadian productions that reflects the Canadian population”, said executive director Carolle Brabant, in the release. “The changes we’ve made to the program this year are consistent with our corporate priorities, namely greater support for emerging talent, documentarians, and women, with a continued focus on Indigenous and official language minority communities. Our goal is that our financing portfolio is varied, representative, and diverse in every respect.”
