Toronto’s Mongrel Media will make its first foray into the distribution of Canadian television properties with the CBC miniseries Human Cargo and the CTV MOW One Dead Indian, streeting on Aug. 22.

According to Glen Wood, Mongrel’s director of home video, the releases represent ‘an expansion into some new territory for Mongrel. We are excited to grow in this direction. We carefully selected the titles to do this with so that they make sense for us and stay within the Mongrel brand.’

Human Cargo, directed by Brad Turner (24) and starring Kate Nelligan (The Cider House Rules), is a gritty drama about the refugees of an African civil war, originally airing in January 2004. The 200-plus-minute film is being released on two discs with multiple commentary tracks from the filmmakers.

Indian, recalling the standoff at Ipperwash Provincial Park in 1995 that saw native activist Dudley George killed, premiered on CTV to about one million viewers this past January.

Mongrel will also use Aug. 22 to release Bombay Calling and Black Coffee, both feature documentaries by the National Film Board that first aired on TVO. Bombay examines the lives of telemarketers in India, with features including a directors’ commentary by Ben Addelman and Samir Mallal, and a short film titled Heavy Metal India, while Coffee is a nearly three-hour opus about the history of the java industry. Coffee does not have bonus materials due to the length of the film and its single-disc release.

Wood says the marketing for these titles will be grassroots campaigns, ‘to work the niches and build momentum into the mainstream.’ For example, one promotional event already scheduled is a September coffee-tasting in Toronto supporting Black Coffee.

Wood would not offer info about the number of units to be released for the new Mongrel titles, but says other TV titles for Mongrel will follow.

Lionsgate works Blu

Lionsgate Home Video has released its first series of titles on Blu-Ray discs, featuring a new menu system offering quicker access to the actual film, siding with the Sony-spearheaded format in the coming face-off between it and the HD DVD format.

Blu-Ray promises high-density storage of high-def content, with 25 gigabytes of memory on a single layered disc, compared to 4.7 gigs on a standard DVD. While the format attempts to carve out its niche, the first Lionsgate Blu-Ray releases are U.S. titles Crash (2005), Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Lord of War, The Punisher and Saw. All five titles feature Metamenu Technology 1.0, which claims to offer better user control than a standard DVD or HD DVD – backed by Microsoft, Toshiba, Sanyo and others – bypassing default title menus and trailers and going right to the film after a skippable 20-second tutorial by Metamenu explaining the features of the disc.

Meta also provides a menu that appears, when summoned, over the film, offering instant access to any feature on the disc, including scene and language selection.

Also…

* The paintball comedy Blackballed: The Bobby Dukes Story, starring The Daily Show’s Rob Corddry, was released on July 25 by Toronto’s Grindstone Media, the film’s Canadian distrib, via a home video partnership for the title with Maple Pictures. Grindstone head Paul Zimic says about 15,000 units of Blackballed – the company’s inaugural home video release – were made available, with preorders from Blockbuster, HMV, Rogers, Best Buy and others.

* New York-based distributor Zeitgeist Films will release Velcrow Ripper’s spiritual doc ScaredSacred in the U.S. on Aug. 22. It is the same version handled in Canada through Mongrel Media.