From a then-illegal handbook on birth control, to the first women of colour film festival, Analogue Revolution offers a dizzying account of feminist media – newspapers, radio, video/film, and film festivals – in Canada from the 1970’s to the 1990’s. Drawing from interviews, archival footage, and ephemera, the film lovingly traces the shifting landscape of Canadian feminism, its successes, its faults, and the many spaces in between. It concludes with a resurgence of contemporary BIPOC feminist collectives picking up the mic. With narration by Canadian Rocker Carole Pope and music tracks from vintage women’s bands, this film is a high-speed feminist rain journey across Canada that drops you off in the future.
This is Gay Propaganda (2015)
You’ve probably heard of Ukraine’s Euromaidan revolution of 2013/14. You may not be aware that LGBT activists played a significant role in this uprising. This personal documentary follows the progress of the Euromaidan revolution, and the Russian occupation that followed, from the perspective of LGBT Ukrainians. The film’s director, a Canadian of Ukrainian descent, traveled to three Ukrainian cities in 2014, tracking the impact of Russia’s “gay propaganda law”, in Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine. There are now some 2 million internally displaced people in Ukraine, and LGBT people comprise a significant part of that population. Meet Alexandra, whose face was on a “Wanted” poster plastered across the city of Donetsk; Anna, a lesbian activist who witnessed Russian-backed violence in the border town of Kharkiv; Olena, who taught women’s self- defence classes during Euromaidan and now fights the spread of anti-gay laws in Eastern Europe. From harrowing accounts of escape and exile to stories of creative resistance, this film shows a side of the conflict in Ukraine the world has not yet seen.
Unspoken Territory (2001)
A docu-drama exploring racist moments in Canadian history – from the Ukrainian internment of early 20th Century, to the Canadian military attack on the Mohawk community of Oka – via interviews and dramatic re-enactments.
Nancy Drew & the Mystery of the Haunted Body (1998)
This campy, experimental drama uses Freudian theory and the film noir genre to rewrite the story of Nancy Drew and comments upon the notion of ‘false memory syndrome’, which was raging at the time. Created during an artists’ residency at The Western Front in Vancouver, it includes hilarious cameo performances by some of Vancouver’s most renowned media and performance artists, including Hank Bull, Eric Metcalfe, and Lori Weidenhammer.
Bodies in Trouble (1991)
Bodies in Trouble, created during the Bush/Mulroney years when moral panics and censorship were trending, depicts the lesbian body as a battlefield amid right-wing backlashes. Using an experimental documentary approach, it follows an absurdly non-monogamous lesbian couple into a lesbian bar (filmed on location at Toronto’s legendary Rose Café), on the phone discussing the Montréal massacre, and making out publicly on the street with anti-queer police violence happening behind them. An experimental music score is intercut with Mary Margaret O’Hara’s haunting song, “Bodies in Trouble.” From abortion rights to anti-feminist violence, this video takes on the issues that are still relevant in the 21st century.
Playing With Fire (1986)
A homeless woman and a social worker fall in love. A comical and unlikely romance, set against the cityscape of inner-city Toronto.
Stronger Than Before (1984)
This documentary examines the meanings of peace movements, from a socialist-feminist perspective. Beginning with civil disobedience actions at Litton Systems Canada in Toronto, supplier of parts for cruise missiles, and expanding into just wars in Latin America, major feminist organizers in Toronto like Mariana Valverde and Carmencita Hernandez ponder the rise in militarism in the Mulroney-Reagan era. The film tries to make connections between Canadian and U.S. participation in the arms race, and liberation struggles in the South.
No Small Change: The Story of the Eaton’s Strike (1984)
A documentary about how a motley band of – mostly female- retail workers took on a retail giant – Canada’s Timothy Eaton Company. In the tradition of socialist and feminist filmmaking of the day, we immersed ourselves in these women’s lives as they fought for a first contract, hanging out with strikers on the picket line, at union meetings and in their homes.
75 Terrific Looks
An experimental film about the politics of fashion and the fashion of politics.
Director’s Note: This was my first film, made in collaboration with the venerable Atlantic Filmmakers’ Co-op. An early feminist work, it inverts the second wave feminist adage, “the personal is political.” In this work, the political is personal. Much of the narration is taken directly from women’s magazines. Nancy Reagan, wife of newly-elected US president Ronald Reagan, becomes a symbol of newly-fashionable right-wing politics.
Winner of Most Promising Filmmaker Award at the Atlantic Film Festival, 1982.
In Development:
Dyke Band
An irreverent feature-length music documentary bringing together the outrageous stories of Toronto’s iconic dyke bands from the 1970s to the 1990s, set against the backdrop of a city transformed, excited, and occasionally confounded by its queer, feminist and lesbian underground. Re-enter the vibrant, sweaty queer bar scene of the 1980’s and 90’s, when bands like Matriphiles, The Nancy Sinatras, and Mama Quila II turned Toronto’s music scene upside down.
Marusya Bociurkiw 