Curated By: Ryan Conrad
The Anti-69 Film and Video Program runs concurrently with the conference March 23-24, 2019. Anti-69 provides a forum for activists, academics, and community members to discuss the mythologies surrounding the 1969 Criminal Code reforms.
Location: Richcraft Hall, room 2200
Fee: There is no fee to attend the Anti-69 Film and Video Program. However, attendees are encouraged to register for the Anti-69 conference (income-based sliding scale registration fee, $0 for low income people). Registration includes access to conference panels and plenaries, and lunch on Sunday March 24.
Keynote Event (Saturday March 23, 8:00pm): Seating is limited for the keynote, hosted at SAW Video's Knot Project Space. Entrance is located at 2 Daly Ave.
Saturday March 23
2:00-4:00pm
w/ Ryan Conrad (Video Program Curator)
- Stand Together (2002), Nancy Nicol, 124 min.
4:00-4:15pm - Break
4:15-5:30pm
w/ Ryan Conrad (Video Program Curator)
- Gross Indecency: The Everett Klippert Story (2018) Laura O'Grady, 17 min.
- You Are on Indian Land (1969), Michael Kanentakeron Mitchell, 36 min.
8:00pm - Keynote Event
w/ Lynne Fernie, Annette Hegel, and more!
Seating is limited, Click here for tickets.
- Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives (1992), Lynne Fernie & Aerlyn Weissman, 84 min.
Hosted at SAW Video's Knot Project Space, 2 Daly Ave, Ottawa.
Co-Sponsored by SAW Video, Carleton University Film Studies Program, and the Anti-69 Conference.
Sunday March 24
9:30-10:50am
w/ Ryan Conrad (Video Program Curator)
- Dancing Around the Table Part 1 (1987), Maurice Bulbulian, 57 min.
- The Love that Won’t Shut Up (2007), Ivan Coyote & Veda Hille, 20 min.
10:50-11:00am - Break
11:00am-12:15pm
w/ Sarah Rodimon (Executive Director, Planned Parenthood Ottawa)
- Struggle for Choice part 1: Abortion Caravan (1986), Nancy Nicol, 31min.
- Struggle for Choice part 3: Québec 1971-1980 (1986), Nancy Nicol, 37min.
12:15-1:15pm - Lunch Break
Lunch is provided for registrants of the Anti-69 conference.
1:15-2:30pm
w/ Jordan Arseneault, Julianne Piddock, Jamie Ross, Jenna Lee Ford (Media Queer)
- Toni, Randi, and Marie (1971), Ron Hallis, 48 min.
2:30-2:45pm - Break
2:45-4:15pm
w/ Chris Bruckert (UOttawa & POWER)H
- Prowling By Night (1990), Gwendolyn, 13 min.
- Our Bodies Our Business (2016), George Stamos, 25 min.
Video Descriptions
Stand Together — Draws together a rich body of archival materials, dramatization, and interviews to bring to life the gay and lesbian liberation movement in Ontario from the Federal Criminal Code Amendments in 1969 to the achievement of Human Rights protection on the basis of sexual orientation in Ontario in 1986. The documentary focuses on the Campaign to Amend the Ontario Human Rights Code led by the Coalition for Gay Rights in Ontario (later renamed the Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Rights in Ontario) while exploring opposition to gay and lesbian rights from police, politicians, and fundamentalist religious groups. It is a story of justice denied and victories won, outrage and humour, celebration and humanity.
Gross Indecency: The Everett Klippert Story — In 1965 mild-mannered Calgary bus driver Everett Klippert was the last Canadian to be jailed for homosexuality. Kevin Allen of the Calgary Gay History Project journeys to better understand Klippert and his place in Canadian LGBTQ history.
You Are on Indian Land — Released in 1969, this short documentary was one of the most influential and widely distributed productions made by the Indian Film Crew (IFC), the first all-Indigenous unit at the NFB. It documents a 1969 protest by the Kanien’kéhaka (Mohawk) of Akwesasne, a territory that straddles the Canada–U.S. border. When Canadian authorities prohibited the duty-free cross-border passage of personal purchases—a right established by the Jay Treaty of 1794—Kanien’kéhaka protesters blocked the international bridge between Ontario and New York State.
Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives — Delves into the rich history of Canadian queer women’s experiences in the mid-20th century. Compelling, often hilarious and always rebellious, the women interviewed in this film recount stories about their search for the places where openly gay women gathered in urban centres. Contemporary interviews, archival footage, and a stylized fictional narrative based on the pulp novels of the 1950s are woven throughout this simultaneously funny, heartbreaking, and empowering film. Forbidden Love brings an important and empowering history of lesbian sexuality in Canada out of the closet.
Dancing Around the Table (Part 1) — A documentary about the Conferences on the Constitutional Rights of the Aboriginal Peoples of Canada (1983-85), focusing on the concept of self-government.
The Love that Won’t Shut Up — What's happened to oral history? What was it like being queer in Vancouver in the 50s? the 60s? the 70s? Where did people hang out? What did they fight for? What do they miss? Armed with curiosity and a cameraman, writer/storyteller Ivan E. Coyote and musician Veda Hille set out to talk to the people who were there. Stories of the Vanport, the International Women's Conference, communal life in the West End and the Castle Kiss-In all come together to make a picture of Vancouver in the middle of the last century.
Struggle for Choice: Part 1, Abortion Caravan — The Federal law changes in 1969, to allow for the legal dissemination of birth control information and the legalization of abortion if performed in an accredited hospital and approved by a therapeutic abortion committee of three doctors (it was not removed from the Criminal Code, making abortion illegal if performed in free-standing clinics or without the approval of a committee.) Women respond to the limitations of the new law with demonstrations. Participants in Abortion Caravan "declare war on the Government of Canada" and shut down Parliament for the first time in Canada's history.
Struggle for Choice: Part 3, Québec — The abortion rights struggle in Quebec. Between 1973 and 1984 the CNALG (Coordination Nationale pour l'avortement libre et gratuit) mounts a massive working class campaign to fight for "free abortion on demand." This tape exposes the political climate in Quebec and the nature of the abortion rights movement which achieved these gains.
Toni, Randi and Marie — Is a cinema-vérité trilogy about the everyday lives of the eponymous female impersonator, transvestite hustler, and female sex-worker. Film scholar Thomas Waugh notes, “Risks of voyeurism aside, the work stands up as a respectful and unique encounter with its proud but stigmatized subjects.” The screening will be followed by panel and talk-back with members of the Queer Media Database Canada-Québec project “69 Positions.” Co-curators Jamie Ross and Jenna Lee Forde will join project co-chair Prof. Julianne Pidduck and Coordinator Jordan Arseneault will discuss the “context and non-text” of the period immediately after decriminalization, (such as it was), and their ongoing exhibition project looking at activist ephemera, publications, and archival documents from immediately before and after Omnibus 69.
Prowling by Night — Produced as part of the National Film Board’s Five Feminist Minutes, this collaborative work between Gwendolyn and fellow sex workers is an examination of police harassment, safe sex education, and sex worker’s rights in Toronto in the late 1980s.
Our Bodies Our Business — In 1989 as part of ACT UP NYC’s Diva TV Project American filmmaker Catherine Gund shot hours of raw footage at the Fifth International Conference on AIDS in Montreal, capturing historically important events and people who effectively changed the course of that conference and redefined relationships between activists and public health researchers. In 2016, with Gund’s permission and essential support from Triple-X Workers' Solidarity Association of B.C, George Stamos created Our Bodies Our Business, a twenty-four-minute documentary featuring the courageous thinkers who carved the way for generations of activists who followed, and who remain relevant today.
