IFP/New York isto allocate seed funding worth a total of $50,000 to five documentary projectsthrough the relaunched Anthony Radziwill Documentary Fund.

Oriana Zill & Marco Williams' Banished: How Whites DroveBlacks Out of Town in America, Marlo Poras' Gambian Marriage, Judith Helfand'sHeat Wave: An Unnatural Disaster, Diane Bernard's The Lord Of Light, and AnnieSundberg and Ricki Stern's The Trials of Darryl Hunt will each benefit from theinitiative.

The grants are open to US-based producers and directors atdevelopment stage, which traditionally has been a tough time for filmmakers tosecure funding.

The fund is named after the late Emmy Award-winning documentaryproducer Anthony Radziwill and was originally set up in 2000 as part of the IFPGotham Awards by Lee Radziwill and current IFP/New York board member CaroleRadziwill.

Up to 10 developments grants will be awarded each year in twosic-month cycles. Around 602 filmmakers nationwide applied for a grant in thecurrent cycle.

"We hope that by putting funding directly into projects at theproposal stage, it will encourage other funders with deeper pockets to step upand support these projects so that they can go into active production," IFP/NewYork executive director Michelle Byrd said in a statement.

The five projects cover a fairly wide range of subjects, fromracial hatred in pre-Depression Era America in Banished and interracialrelationships in Gambian Marriage, to fatal weather conditions in mid-1990sChicago in Heat Wave, science fiction filmmaking in The Lord Of Light, and aNorth Carolina murder case in The Trials Of Darryl Hunt.