Montreal: More than 65 titles from the National Film Board's English Program are in various stages of production or in this year's distribution pipeline, including 40 documentaries and 13 high-profile, feature-length docs.

The program lineup includes wild and wonderful animation from award-winning directors John Weldon, Chris Hinton and Cordell Barker, a new creative website for children, and a Paul Cowan portrait of the working people who bet and lost on Westray.

Documentary highlights include John Paskievich's My Mother's Village, a Documentary West-produced cinematic journey of exile and memory based on the filmmaker's experience as the child of a refugee; Linda Ohama's Obaachan's Garden, a Documentary West portrait of the filmmaker's grandmother and her experience as a "Japanese picture bride" in the 1920s; and Daniel Sekulich's Aftermath: The Remnants of War, a Documentary Ontario coproduction with Aftermath Pictures evoking stories of war from France, Bosnia, Russia and Vietnam, presold to History Television.

Directors Tanya Tree and Merrily Weisbord team up on the intimate portrait Ted Allan: Minstrel Boy of the Twentieth Century, a Documentary East coproduction with Montreal's Galafilm. It's slated for delivery this fall and has been presold to both History Television and Bravo!

New NFB docs likely to attract wide interest include two Documentary Ontario productions, award-winning director John Zaritsky's excited Ski Bums, a look at the strange breed of extreme skiers and snowboarders, and Kevin McMahon's feature-length revisiting of the ideas and philosophy of Canada's best-known thinker, McLuhan's Wake, presold to TVOntario.

Also on tap, Tom Dodd's Truckers, a sneak peek at the North American subculture of long-haul drivers, produced by Documentary West in Edmonton.

Docs licensed by CBC include Joe Blasioli's epoch-making Chuvalo vs. Ali and The Nature of Things entry, Drug Deals: Anatomy of a Prescription Drug, an NFB/Merit Motion Pictures coproduction from director Elise Swerhone.

Docs licensed by CTV include Teresa MacInnes' Waging Peace, an NFB/Triad coproduction on one highschooler's brave campaign to stop student violence, and Robert Duncan's When A Child Goes Missing, an inside perspective of the lives of four families who have experienced the nightmare, slated for CTV's Signature Series.

Cowan's Westray:

six years in the making

Veteran NFB filmmaker Paul Cowan (Give Me Your Soul, Lessons) is completing post on Westray, an 80-minute chronicle of the lives of six people, three widows and three surviving miners, whose destinies were changed forever by the May 8, 1992 Westray mine explosion disaster.

The film was originated on Super 16mm and is produced by Documentary East in Halifax. It was prepped in 1995, with shooting starting in 1996 and resuming in '99 and 2000.

Cowan says the film's dramatized elements "are much more a part of the stream of consciousness of the six characters who make up the film."