The lineup of Canuck films on the fall festival circuit is chock-full of terrific comedies and intense literary adaptations, led by Kari Skogland's The Stone Angel, the ideal opener for the Canadian Images program.

The Stone Angel, based on Margaret Laurence's classic novel about Hagar (Oscar winner Ellen Burstyn), an old woman looking back on her life and loves, was shot in Winnipeg and is produced by the Toronto-based Skogland and Manitoba's Buffalo Gal Pictures.

VIFF's Canadian Images will unspool 82 features and shorts - both dramas and docs - with a lineup of celluloid hot off the plane from TIFF, including Jeremy Podeswa's adaptation of the Anne Michaels book Fugitive Pieces, Bruce McDonald's The Tracey Fragments, based on the book by Maureen Medved, and Clement Virgo's Poor Boy's Game.

Western filmmakers include Bruce Sweeney (American Venus) and Carl Bessai (Normal) of Vancouver and Winnipeg's Guy Maddin (My Winnipeg).

One film looking to crack them up is Quebec's current box-office champ, Patrick Huard's comedy Les 3 p'tits cochons, which has rung up $3.2 million and counting at the belle box office for Christal Films.

VIFF will host the world premieres of three features - Taming Tammy from Vancouver filmmaker Tracy D. Smith, British director Paul Unwin's Elijah, and Quebec filmmaker Matthiew Klinck's Hank and Mike. Mike Barker's Shattered makes its Canadian premiere.

Snagging premieres does not top the agenda for VIFF's Canadian Images, according to its programmer Terry McEvoy, who thinks like a people-pleasing distributor.

"It is most important for me to satisfy our audiences with a great film," he explains. "So I wouldn't turn down a film that a Vancouver audience would appreciate in order to satisfy my ego and get a film they would enjoy less in order to have more premieres." That should be music to fest funder Telefilm Canada's ears, as the Crown corporation's festival mandate is to reach Canadians.

McEvoy says he aims to accomplish several goals with the program.

"First of all, I am trying to get bums in seats, so I definitely want films that will appeal to our sophisticated Vancouver film audience," he explains. "I also look for an outrageous premise or an extraordinary idea carried out well, or a film that is technically excellent. A combination of the two is ideal."

McEvoy will also program movies financed for TV, as long as they are, in his estimation, well-crafted and tell a great story.

Elijah, a B.C./Manitoba copro commissioned as a CTV MOW, will receive its world premiere at VIFF. "Most of these films ultimately end up on TV anyway," notes the pragmatic programmer.

Elijah is a docudrama about the life of Elijah Harper, an aboriginal politician who changed the course of Canadian history by defying former prime minister Brian Mulroney and bringing the Meech Lake Constitutional Accord to a grinding halt in 1990.

"It's a David and Goliath-type story," says Kevin Eastwood, supervising producer for Anagram Pictures of Vancouver. "Elijah Harper was a very unlikely hero. He was unassuming and shy, in debt and with his marriage faltering at the time he did this very symbolic act."