Astral Media's evolution into a pure-play media company in the last decade has paid dividends for French-language film and TV producers in the form of Le Fonds Harold Greenberg, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year as the English stream fetes its 20th.

Situated within a funding mix along with public agencies - chiefly Telefilm Canada and SODEC - and other private funders, the Montreal-based Le Fonds has, since 1996, supported 33 Quebec feature films. It can share some of the credit for helping fuel Quebec's recent feature film boom, investing in well-received hits such as Denys Arcand's Les Invasions barbares, Jean-Marc Vallée's C.R.A.Z.Y. and Louise Archambault's Familia.

But Odile Méthot, who helped get Le Fonds off the ground in 1996 and became its president and managing director in 2000, insists the fund looks to help finance more than just potential crowd-pleasers.

"We don't make decisions necessarily on box office," she says. "If we feel the producer needs the money to do a better movie, we'll get behind them."

According to Méthot, Le Fonds' program committee looks primarily for scripts with good stories that will likely get produced and released into the marketplace. If the subsequent films deliver standing ovations at festivals or big hauls at the box office, all the better.

Program committee members and outside consultants read each script submitted to Le Fonds, and all report back to the board of directors, which makes all funding decisions.

The fund annually invests up to $100,000 in each of five or so movies - a modest sum in a film's overall budget, but one likely to help producers retain more equity in their projects, according to Le Fonds chair Rock Demers.

"If you can bring $100,000 to a film, that might help the producer not have to borrow further to complete financing or put the money in himself," says Demers, also a producer at Montreal's La Fête Productions. "And if the film succeeds, the producer has more money to plough back into future projects."

In a climate where domestic financing for Canadian movies has shrunk in recent years, private funds like Le Fonds have become an increasingly important lifeline for Quebec producers.

The first feature to benefit from Le Fonds equity was André Forcier's 1997 fantasy comedy La Comtesse de Baton Rouge, a 10-time Genie Award nominee about the romance between a filmmaker and a bearded lady at a circus sideshow.

Other early projects receiving Le Fonds equity include Léa Pool's Emporte-moi (winner of four Prix Jutra) and Richard Ciupka's thriller Nazareth USA, as well as TV programs generated by Montreal's Juste pour rire comedy festival.

By the late 1990s, other successful Quebec movies that would tap Le Fonds include Robert Favreau's drama Les Muses orphelines, Denise Filiatrault's popular comedy sequel Laura Cadieux... la suite and Michel Jetté's biker thriller Hochelaga.

Upcoming fall releases with Le Fonds equity include Jean Beaudin's family tale Sans elle and Patrice Sauvé's gritty underworld drama Cheech.