Montreal: Cinar Corporation and the National Head Start Association have announced an exclusive business partnership to develop, produce and distribute branded training and a/v products to children, teachers, staff and parents at 2,051 Head Start programs across the u.s.

The u.s. preschool program reaches more than 850,000 underprivileged kids.

Cinar says product lines will include curriculum and teaching materials, resources for staff and parents, workshops and conferences, computer media and a/v products such as videos and cd-roms, and audio-related materials.

The nhsa membership organization represents programs with 160,000 staff members who operate 12,200 centres with associated programs in 42,000 classrooms.

The partnership includes distribution options for each Head Start centre and was developed by Cinar and Mike Mayberry, president of HighReach Learning, Cinar Education’s preschool unit based in Charlotte, North Carolina.

On the production front, Cinar and Toronto-based producer Bernard Zukerman began principal photography July 25 in the Montreal region on the two-hour tv movie Heart: The Marilyn Bell Story, with Manon Briand (2 Secondes) directing.

The film is based on the real-life story of Marilyn Bell, the 16-year-old Canadian swimmer who became the first person to successfully complete the 32-mile crossing of Lake Ontario in 1954.

Canadian teen talent Caroline Dhavernas (The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne, Reseaux, Allo Prof!) plays Bell and Ron White (Joan of Arc, Vendetta) plays coach Gus Ryder.

Heart is the fourth Cinar/ Zukerman collaboration following three big-budget miniseries: Million Dollar Babies, a sweep-ratings winner on both cbc and cbs in the u.s. from Christian Duguay; Anne Wheeler’s The Sleep Room; and the soon-to-be-aired historical Prairie drama Revenge of the Land, directed by John N. Smith. Irene Litinsky (Audrey Hepburn) is pm/supervising producer. Pierre Letarte is the dop and Jean-Baptiste Tard is the shoot’s production designer. Zukerman is producing and Cinar’s Micheline Charest and Ron Weinberg are the exec producers.

Cinar will distribute internationally. The show has been presold in Canada to cbc. Filming wraps at the end of August.