The National Film Board has inked agreements with Canada's leading independent producers associations, the CFTPA and APFTQ, in order to encourage closer ties with independent producers and generate coproductions between them and the NFB.

The board says the agreements will spawn "increased professional exchanges between the NFB and association members, and greater cooperation in areas of common interest."

These areas include production and distribution of docs and animation, as well as collective agreements, rights, new filmmaking technologies and digital production.

The agreements were approved and signed by CFTPA past-chair Laszlo Barna at the Banff World Television Festival on June 11, and by APFTQ president Jacquelin Bouchard, on behalf of French-language producers, in April.

While in Banff, the NFB announced it would contribute $800,000 to Canadian theater-bound documentaries in 2005/06, with half the money coming by way of licences from The Documentary Channel.

-www.nfb.ca