Parade: Queer Acts of Love & Resistance highlights the frontlines of the struggle

Winnipeg Free Press

4 days ago

It's a cruel paradox when a film showcasing the fight for LGBTTQ+ rights in Canada over the last 50 years is released at a time when those hard-fought gains are once again under attack.
Whether it's Alberta's recent legislative changes restricting access to health care, education and sports for transgender and gender diverse people, or the rise in police-reported hate crimes motivated by sexual orientation, LGBTTQ+ rights can no longer be taken for granted in Canada.
It's in this political context that Winnipeg filmmaker Noam Gonick debuts his latest documentary Parade: Queer Acts of Love & Resistance, which highlights the pivotal moments that shaped Canada's LGBTTQ+ movement.
Black-and-white photos and rarely seen archival footage — including Super 8 reels newly digitized after 50 years in storage — animate the stories shared by dozens of activists and community leaders.
In one particularly unsettling sequence, graphic imagery of police brutality against queer protesters from two different eras are juxtaposed, one in colour, the other in black and white, underscoring the ongoing struggles through the decades.
Some events may already be familiar to some viewers. The gay liberation movement of the 1970s or the devastation of the AIDS crisis in the '80s have been widely covered in pop culture, but are often filtered through an American lens.
In Parade, Gonick shifts the focus to the uniquely Canadian experience of queer resistance and resilience.
The film is at its strongest when highlighting lesser known histories, such as that of Jeanine Maes, one of the last women institutionalized for lesbianism in 1962 or the police raids and censorship trial against The Body Politic, one of Canada's first gay publications.
Broken into thematic chapters like a docu-series, the film moves through stories told from gay, lesbian, trans, drag, Indigenous, Asian and Black communities. At times, this structure can feel a bit disjointed, but reflects a familiar challenge in queer storytelling: how to represent a community that is not singular.
Shared struggle and defiant joy are the unifying threads across these stories, though, at times, hearing similar themes from many voices makes the film feel somewhat repetitive and fewer voices might have allowed some of them more room to breathe.
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Still, in today's climate, Gonick's film feels more urgent than ever. It's a 96-minute history lesson on the hard fought rights of Canada's queer communities, from police raids to early drag shows, and community organizing to the House of Commons.
Justine Pimlott, the film's Toronto-based, Winnipeg-raised producer, hopes the documentary serves as a reminder of where the community has come from, and a call to action.
Audiences already seem to be taking inspiration from the film, which screened at the Gimli International Film Festival this past weekend and took home the awards for best Manitoba director and best Manitoba film. It also previously received the audience award for best documentary feature at the Inside Out 2SLGBTQ+ Film Festival in Toronto.
If you've ever wondered why police attendance at pride is so contentious – or why Pride itself remains a necessary act of resistance and joy — Parade offers the answers.
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