By Antoine Damiens

Film festivals often rely on “precarious cultural work”.[1] Increasingly adopting the neoliberal logic of the creative economy, they entail particular forms of affective labour, combining “the pleasure and excitement experienced during the festival – alongside the lesser-known affective states of despair, disappointment, and anger that need to be managed as a consequence of films being rejected from the festival”. [2] Although recent scholarship has emphasised the precarious material reality of cultural workers, festival organisers often describe their activity as a “labour of love”. “Labour of love” – a somewhat naïve and romanticised shorthand for the less glamourous and resolutely not sponsorship friendly term “precarious” – insists on cultural work as producing not value or economic stability but intangible affects and relationships – friendships.

While the expression “labour of love” certainly participates in rebranding festival organisers’ precarious, unpaid or underpaid, cultural work as engendering positive affects, it also points to the central role played by collaborations and friendships in artistic endeavours. As I argue elsewhere, this emphasis on affects and friendship provides a productive framework for understanding festival studies itself: academic discourses on festivals often refract our own circuits and networks. [3] In the context of this article, however, I am interested in how friendships sustained at and through festivals participate in shaping cinematic cultures.[4] Reflecting upon her contributions to both film studies and the festival phenomenon, B. Ruby Rich resituates the role played by chosen networks of friends in establishing Women’s cinema:

Knowledge can be acquired and exhibited in a variety of ways. To read and then to write: that’s the standard intellectual route. In the years of my own formation, though, there were many other options. Journals and journeys, conferences and conversations, partying and politicking, going to movies and going to bed.[5]

Scholars traditionally describe festival circuits and networks in terms of their “relation to living and non-living actors”.[6] Emblematically, Dina Iordanova describes festival circuits as a “treadmill in motion only for as long as there is the living person to service it, only as long as there is someone to keep it in motion”.[7] In this framework, participants are first and foremost defined by their professional occupation: they are understood as “stakeholders” or “cultural intermediaries” whose competing performances regulate the event and who have “particular interests in seeing the network proliferate”.[8] While this framework posits that collaboration between stakeholders is crucial in organising festivals, it does not fully account for friendships sustained beyond the duration of the event.

In contrast, Rich’s autoethnographic history of Women’s cinema starts not from the festivals she successively curated, organised, or simply attended, but rather from her own encounters with festival-goers turned friends and collaborators. In so doing, Rich echoes Michel Foucault’s definition of friendship as a productive, radical, and “slantwise” network of relationality, one born out of her participation in various festivals and conferences but that exceeds traditional definitions of the circuit. As a network of relationality, friendships “short-circuit [institutions] and introduce love where there’s supposed to be only law, rule, or habit”. It produces a potential for collaborations beyond one’s participation in an event, “[tracing] diagonal lines (…) [that] allow [relational] virtualities to come to light”.[9]

In this paper, I hope to illustrate what could be gained in taking seriously friendship as a network of relationality. Shifting the emphasis from traditional definitions of festival circuits to the interpersonal networks created and sustained at festivals, I analyse the role played by friendships in fostering artistic collaborations in 1980s-1990s Toronto as expressed through Canadian director John Greyson’s oeuvre. Indeed, Greyson’s work as a film and videomaker, political activist, curator, and festival board member generously refers back to friendships born out of his involvement on the festival/academic circuit.[10] As Susan Lord argues,

While Greyson never divests authorship and its social responsibilities, “John Greyson” is also central to the formation of collectivism since the 1980s. Much of the work is [sic] produced with his name is done within collective processes wherein filiations, collaborations between friends, and artist communities develop a praxis and an imaginary.[11]

In tracing Greyson’s collaborations through (and involvement in) various North American festivals and cinematic organisations, this paper argues that theorising friendships as radical networks of relationality enables us to advance festival studies on two fronts: (1) a reconceptualisation of the relationship between festival stakeholders through their artistic and institutional collaborations and (2) an analysis of interpersonal relationships as “crossing over” festival circuits and producing cinematic cultures.

Greyson’s “gay squib”: Friendships, collaborations, and the emergence of a gay and lesbian film culture

Greyson’s first tapes coincide with the emergence of a gay and lesbian cinematic culture marked by both video activism and an ethos of collaboration between artists, activists, and scholars. As Larry Horne and John Ramirez’s review of an academic conference held within the 1983 UCLA Gay & Lesbian Media Festival makes clear, Greyson’s politics and aesthetics cannot be separated from

the specificities of the video apparatus  – [he] attempted to situate the emergence and input of gay and lesbian artists in video where the codes of production are not yet rigidly conventionalized. Promoting the undertaking of a history of alternative practices, Greyson’s history of video attempted a clarification of the social and cultural contexts for the medium’s development, its relation and intersection with other artistic forms, and its possible place in the social struggle for increased sexual liberation.[12]

In the early 1970s, a few critics and scholars organised gay and lesbian film festivals, largely dedicated to unearthing the gay subtext of European and Hollywood films and influenced by traditional modes of cinephilia.[13] The situation changed rapidly in the early 1980s: the Alternative Cinema conference held at Bard College and the protests against the films Cruising and Windows served as catalysts for the development of a community-based gay and lesbian cinematic culture, highly influenced by the politics and aesthetics of the video format.

In June 1979, “[f]our hundred film and video activists [as well as critics and scholars] met at Bard College in New York State (…), the most important national gathering of progressive media workers since the 1930s.” The conference, organised with the support of Jump Cut, aimed at bridging the gap between film scholars, artists, and activists. It featured workshops as well as an extensive screening programme, akin to a festival. While the conference emphasised the role played by video as a minority-led praxis of resistance, participants soon “recognized that their needs were not being adequately addressed by the structure and organization of the Conference, whose Organizing Committee was dominated by white, male straights from New York.” [14]

In order to defuse the controversy, the organisers included special sessions dedicated to minorities, albeit relegating some gay and lesbian programming to late night sessions.[15] In that context, the Lesbian and Gay Male Caucus (which included film and videomakers, critics, and scholars, among whom Thomas Waugh, Jan Oxenberg, and B. Ruby Rich) established a list of demands directed at the organising committee. The group called for an exchange of information between gay and lesbian media workers and scholars, as well as for the creation of “[a]lternative distribution centers which must seek out, distribute, and encourage the production of media made by lesbians and gay men.”[16]

A month later, a coalition of gay filmmakers, critics, scholars, and activists crystallised around two films distributed by United Artists: William Friedkin’s Cruising and Gordon Willis’s Windows. Importantly, United Artists’s parent company Transamerica had, through two of its subsidiaries, financed the campaign of homophobic politician John Briggs.[17] Furthermore, Friedkin had already been criticised by the gay liberation movement for his film The Boys in the Band.[18] In the spring of 1979, a script of Cruising was leaked to Village Voice columnist Arthur Bell, who urged readers to actively protest the film. In New York alone, more than 8,000 people marched against the film.

Taken together, the Alternative Cinema Conference and the protests against Cruising are emblematic of a new political movement symbolised by an alliance between critics, scholars, festival organisers, and film and videomakers. Gay and lesbian artists and activists were increasingly interested in the video format, which was understood as a community-based political medium enabling new modes of self-representation. Unsurprisingly, video festivals, defined in opposition to the elitism of the celluloid, emerged in the decade.[19] These debates are refracted in Greyson’s first tapes, which articulate a discourse on video as a collaborative critique of traditional modes of representation.[20]

A few months later, Greyson joined two organisations that were particularly active in mobilising against Cruising: both the Association for Independent Video and Film [AIVF] and the National Association for Lesbian and Gay Filmmakers [NALGF] sought to enact the recommendations made by the Lesbian and Gay Male Caucus and to create alternative circuits of distribution for video. The NALGF, headed by Richard Schmiechen, Oxenberg, and Greyson, “include[d] producers, directors, writers, editors, cinematographers, video artists, film exhibitors, film organization administrators, critics, and film and video students.”[21] Its mandate revolved around two axes: to lobby against homophobic media and the erasure of LGBT people from Hollywood productions, and to develop independent circuits of distribution for gay and lesbian films and videos.[22]

Members were quite divided on how to achieve these goals. In several meetings, they discussed whether the NALGF should act as a “service organization with a distribution base [akin to Women Make Movies], [a] professional lobbying association for lesbian and gays working both as independents and in the industry, [a] trade association representing and supporting independent gay and lesbian media [modelled after the AIVF]”, or a loose informal network dedicated to connecting filmmakers with emerging LGBT festivals.[23] The NALGF often positioned itself as an interface between filmmakers and festivals. In the early 1980s, the organisation operated as a relay between Peter Lowy’s and Michael Lumpkin’s gay film festivals (in New York and San Francisco, respectively). It not only curated programmes for both events, but also organised a cross-pollination of sorts. These programmes were usually followed by a panel with filmmakers, festival organisers, and critics. [24] The NALGF also provided assistance in organising several ephemeral LGBT festivals, such as Southampton College’s Eggo or New York University’s Abuse, and relayed calls for submission, notably for Waugh’s 1982 Montreal-based festival Sans Popcorn.[25]

The NALGF further benefited from its connections with the AIVF. Capitalising on his role as a coordinator for both the NALGF and the AIVF, Greyson organised in March 1982 the festival/roundtable “Independent Closets: Gay & Lesbian Filmmakers Open Doors,” which featured both film/videomakers and scholars-critics (among which Mark Berger, Oxenberg, Vito Russo, and Waugh).[26] Greyson’s involvement in the NALGF led him to participate in other foundational conferences/festivals. In particular, Greyson presented his videos and gave a talk at the 1983 UCLA Gay & Lesbian Media Festival. This event juxtaposed screenings with panels intermixing scholars (Dennis Altman, Richard Dyer, Martha Fleming, Bill Nichols, Ramirez, Waugh and Andrea Weiss), critics (Russo and Robin Wood), filmmakers (Barbara Hammer, Paul Leaf and Oxenberg), and activists – many of whom Greyson later collaborated with.[27]

The most important conference / festival happened a few years later, in reaction to the sex wars and the AIDS crisis. In 1986, a group of film and videomakers, students, and scholars at Boston’s Collective for Living Cinema decided to constitute a queer reading / screening group. In an effort to further intertwine self-representation and theory, the group tasked Bill Horrigan and Martha Gever with organising a series of screenings, which evolved into the 1989 conference and festival “How Do I Look? Queer Film and Video”, held by the Bad Object-Choices collective at the Anthology Film Archives and sponsored by the journal October. The event featured an eclectic mix of artists/activists (Gregg Bordowitz, Jean Carlomusto, Richard Fung, Isaac Julien, Tom Kalin, Stuart Marshall, and Ray Navarro) and scholars/critics (Altman, José Arroyo, Douglas Crimp, Theresa de Lauretis, Diana Fuss, Gever, Cora Kaplan, Kobena Mercer, Judith Mayne, Rich, and Waugh). [28]

In the aftermath of the How Do I Look? conference/festival, Greyson started working with Pratibha Parmar and Gever on the field-defining anthology Queer Looks, published four years later (1993). It features many of the same filmmakers (Bordowitz, Carlomusto, Crimp, Nick Deocampo, John DiStefano, Fung, Hammer, Navarro, Parmar, Catherine Saalfield, and Jerry Tartaglia), and scholars/critics (Alison Butler, Chin, Gever, Mercer, Rich, Waugh and Patricia White).[29] The book’s introduction simultaneously recalls Greyson’s earlier attempts to foster a gay and lesbian distribution circuit and summarises the importance of collaboration and friendship in establishing a gay and lesbian cinematic culture:

We wanted to make public some of the exchanges occurring between an ever-shifting network of artists, organizers, and activists that spanned several continents. We wanted to witness some of the coalitions and collaborations, efforts at a new type of politic, a new sort of image. We wanted to put down on paper some of the ideas being debated by this larger “we”, this ever-expanding “we”, this collective, communal “we” of lesbian and gay critics, artists and audiences. (…) We were bored dissatisfied with queer critics who endlessly analyzed Hollywood but ignored the independent sector. (…) Distribution for independent queer features is both red-hot at the box office and nonexistent.  Distribution for queer video art has both mushroomed and ceased to exist.[30]

As these examples make clear, festivals and activist groups constituted spaces where scholars, critics, filmmakers, and festival organisers could meet and collaborate, thereby defining an emerging gay and lesbian cinematic culture. Friendships created through the festival/academic circuit were instrumental in establishing both gay and lesbian cinema and Greyson’s career as an activist, videomaker, and book author. Many of the people involved in the NALGF, the UCLA Gay & Lesbian Media Festival, or the How do I Look conference/festival became collaborators, featured in both the Queer Look anthology and Greyson’s videos. From Waugh’s contribution as a “full frontal nudity expert”[31] to Fleming’s double role as actor and scholar, Greyson’s collaborators often occupied several institutional positions at once.

The “Toronto scene”: friendships and video/film circuits in Canada.

Video, a format far less elitist than celluloid films, played a key role in the development of this ethos of collaboration. In this historical context, videos were often marked by the idea of community. In this section, I shift my emphasis from Greyson’s collaborative efforts to define a gay and lesbian cinematic culture to friendships sustained through Toronto’s video collectives, positioned at the intersection of various festival circuits. Through the development of cooperatives, artist-run centres and festivals, videomakers in Toronto were constantly screening or curating each other’s work.[32] Video can be productively thought of as a cultural scene, defined by William Straw as:

designat[ing] particular clusters of social and cultural activity without specifying the nature of the boundaries which circumscribe them. Scenes may be distinguished according to their location (as in Montreal’s St. Laurent scene), the genre of cultural production which gives them coherence (a musical style, for example, as in references to the electroclash scene) or the loosely defined social activity around which they take shape (…) Scene invites us to map the territory of the city in new ways while, at the same time, designating certain kinds of activity whose relationship to territory is not easily asserted.[33]

In Toronto, this video scene emerged partly as a response to State censorship. In the 1980s, the Ontario Censor Board [OCB] actively forced art galleries, theatres, and festivals to cancel screenings of sexually-explicit films and videos. In 1979 for instance, the Arts Gallery of Ontario – one of the most prestigious museum in Toronto – had to call off its screening of Jean Genet’s Un chant d’amour (1950), deemed too (homo)sexual.[34] The Toronto Festival of Festivals (renamed TIFF) faced a similar situation with its 1982 programme “Video/Video,” which included tapes from Colin Campbell, Lisa Steele, and Kim Tomczak.[35] Greyson summarises the situation:

[T]he OCB insisted that any public screening must submit to prior censorship and that any venues, distributors, makers, or projectionists proceeding without prior approval would be subject to charges – including every art gallery, public library, community centre, high school, bar, bar mitzvah, you name it. (…) Most arts and community groups thought they were exempt or, at least, that the OCB was kidding. Wrong. The Canadian Images Film Festival was fined. (…) A Space Gallery was raided. Despite intensive organizing and numerous (drawn-out) legal challenges, a decisive chill caused the collective balls of the arts community to retract. Groups and individuals were understandably unwilling to become the next sacrificial lamb. Screenings were cancelled for fear of charges.[36]

Video artists were particularly active in contesting the Ontario Censor Board.[37] They often organised illegal screenings, thus openly defying censorship legislation. In 1981 for instance, the magazine Fuse put together a 12 hour-long screening of documentaries which had not been approved by the OCB.[38] Protests against censorship often took the form of inter-organisation collaborations. The 1985 festival “Six Days of Resistance”, which Greyson helped organising, is here a fascinating example: presented by A Space, the Women’s Cultural Building, the Artists Union and Trinity Square Video, it screened over forty films and videos without prior approval from the OCB.[39] This particular event is at the core of Greyson’s contribution to the anthology Queer Looks. Analysing the relationships between sex panic and State censorship in Toronto, Greyson recalls some of the tactics mobilised by video activists: in order to avoid having the prints seized by the authorities, “organizers would ask any cops present (undercover or not) to identify themselves, and they would then ask them to leave. (…) By law, cops must comply with this request. Since they couldn’t see the tapes or films, they couldn’t therefore lay charges”.[40]

This struggle against censorship partly accounts for the ethos of collaboration at the core of Toronto’s video scene, structured along a loose network of inter-related collective organisations which shared a commitment to “access and activism, participation and dialogue”, often regrouping “documentarists” and “video artists” in the same space (among others: LIFT, Charles Street Video, Trinity Square Video, and Vtape).[41] These artist-run centres, cooperative distributors, and art galleries were conveniently located around Queen Street, thereby facilitating inter-disciplinary cooperation: one could edit, distribute, and screen videos in the same building.[42] Greyson actively participated in these organisations. He notably took part in the 1984 and 1986 New Works Shows (organised by Trinity Square Video and Vtape)[43] and in YYZ’s 1986 Habits.[44] These artist-run centres and video co-ops fostered artistic collaborations and helped materialising Greyson’s call for alternative networks. As Lord argues,

[The] role of video co-ops and artist-run spaces in the shaping of Toronto’s art scene is profoundly important for our understanding of how Greyson’s work of the 1980s takes shape. His credits read like a meeting of Charles Street Video (which he joined upon moving to Toronto in the early 1980s), Trinity Square Video (where he worked with Michael Balser in the AIDS PSAs) (…) or a meeting at Vtape (on which he sat as a member of the board).[45]

Importantly, this cultural scene intersected with various festival circuits. In the 1990s, “over one hundred small and medium sized documentary, queer, experimental, student and community-based media festivals” were organised in the city.[46] In Toronto, festivals dedicated to South Asian queer films (Desh Pardesh) coexisted alongside events devoted to alternative pornography (Pleasure Dome).[47] These organisations did not compete with one another. Rather, they largely shared information and expertise.[48] Toronto’s video scene thus reflected “a crucial permutation on the formulation of a metropolitan cosmopolitanism”[49] that juxtaposed festival circuits and promoted collaborative organising.

Several gay and lesbian film and/or video festivals were organised in the city.[50] Some happened only once, such as the 1986 “Inverted Image” organised by the newspaper Xtra!.[51] Others were multi-disciplinary: for instance, Sky Gilbert’s “Queer Culture Festival” (starting in 1990) featured videos alongside theatre plays and dance.[52] Inside/OUT, Toronto’s most famous LGBT film and video festival, was created in 1991 in an effort to develop a queer circuit defined in opposition to commercial films. According to Joceline Andersen,

The filmmakers who began the group saw it as a platform to showcase queer experimental and transgressive work that with short formats and DIY production values could not find a venue in the art house circuit or the burgeoning film festival phenomenon of the largely narrative New Queer Cinema.[53]

These gay and lesbian organisations were actively fighting against censorship. Canadian custom agents and Canada Post enforced censorship legislation rather zealously. Shipments from and to the Glad Day Bookshop and the Women’s bookstore were prevented in 1991 and 1992, and many film prints were destroyed at the border. This censorship also took the form of a withdrawal of public funding. Grants to A Space, Arts Sake, and Trinity Square Video were cancelled in 1982.[54] In 1992, the Christian association CURE successfully lobbied against funding allotted by the government of Ontario and the City of Toronto to gay cultural events: the Metro council “voted to rescind a $4000 grant to the Inside/OUT lesbian and gay film and video festival”. The theatre company Buddies in Bad Time was similarly accused of “exercising bad judgement by allowing the Queer Culture Festival of Toronto to rent their space to hold two seminars on bondage and ‘female ejaculation’”.[55] Due to a strong mobilisation of the press and artistic communities, funding was eventually re-established.[56]

Gay and lesbian cultural events were often connected with festivals organised in the video circuit. Local videomakers both navigated between and participated in the building of different venues: if the Toronto scene was organised around several structures, they were largely incestuous. Images, a festival started in 1988 by the Northern Vision collective, actively curated programmes dedicated to minorities:

It had also been our desire to be egalitarian in our selection regarding gender, region and race. We wanted to represent those voices which through formal concerns or socio-political agendas are often ignored by national showcases. (…) The Northern Visions selection body attempted to represent various concerns of Blacks, Asians, Native Peoples, gay and lesbian activists and feminists. These concerns have traditionally been ignored by mainstream festivals, yet they truly contribute to what is produced and what we know about Canadian culture.[57]

These incestuous organisations enabled particular forms of friendship and collaboration among filmmakers. Following the models of artist-run centres, they were organised by videomakers themselves. Their organising teams were largely overlapping. Board members of one festivals were often screened in another. In Figure 1, I trace Greyson’s artistic collaborations through his involvement in both Images and Inside/Out.[58] More than half of the festivals’ team members have participated in Greyson’s projects, in one way or another. Greyson’s involvement in these events as curator, board member (Inside/OUT 1994-1996, 1998-1999), jury (Images 1994), lecturer (Inside/OUT 1993), or filmmaker (Inside/OUT: 1991, 1994, 1996, 2000, Images 1990, 1992, 1994) indicate the extent to which festivals served not only as spaces of exhibition, but also as places where one could meet old and new friends. These friendships and collaborations were not limited to Image and Inside/OUT. For instance YYZ’s 1986 Habits show incorporated Greyson’s Moscow Does not Believe in Queers (1986) alongside with Kibbins’ Henry Kissinger Won the Nobel Peace Prize (1986), a tape on which Greyson was a technician.

As this historical example makes clear, festival organising in 1980-1990s Toronto both reflected existing and fostered new artistic collaborations. Cultural work produces friendships that can potentially crossover festival circuits. Greyson’s videos both feature friends and collaborators met on the festival circuit and address some of the issues debated within the Toronto video scene. His oeuvre corresponds to a “project animated by friendship through which an extensive and affective political geography grows (…) a spatial network of solidarity [which] form[s] translocal productions”.[59]

Networks of friendship, circuits, and stakeholders

Filmmaker and AIDS activist Mike Hoolboom describes Greyson’s position within the Toronto scene:

[Greyson] is never “at the beginning”; his ambitions rest neither with the first word nor with hopes for the last. Instead, he finds himself always in the midst of a social web of produced and producing identities (…) It is little surprise that as an artist whose entry point admits him to a conversation already underway, Greyson receives and adapts established modes of address.[60]

In resituating Greyson’s work as a videomaker, curator, festival organiser, and public intellectual, this paper argued that friendship, defined as a network of relationality, provides a theoretical framework for conceptualising both cinematic cultures and crossovers between festival circuits. Greyson’s network of friends and collaborators refracts the evolution of both gay and lesbian cinema and the Toronto video scene. While, in Mike Hoolboom’s words, Greyson is never at the beginning of this history, his words often preface major anthologies on censorship, AIDS, and gay and lesbian cinema – generously introducing friends, reflecting (upon) the collective nature of video/activism.^[61]

Greyson’s career also illustrates what could be gained in taking seriously these networks of friendship: as such, his collaborations transcend professional occupations. Greyson and his friends often occupied several institutional locations at once, constantly shifting between videomaking, organising, curating, and writing. This is not surprising: in this historical context, “the existence of the pure critic/scholar who has not tried curating or film/video making is as rare as the curator who has not directed a film or written film criticism (though both animals do exist, of course).”[62] As a slantwise network of relationality, friendships point to the productive interplays between various forms of participation in festival organising.

This is particularly important, as scholars often analyse festivals in terms of the competing performances of various stakeholders. Actors participating in festivals are traditionally understood through their professional occupation, an hermeneutic model which presupposes that one is either a festival-goer, or a critic, or an organiser, or a policy-maker, or a scholar. While such analyses enable us to describe the cultural economy of festival organising, the reality is – as always – messy: one might be a critic and/or a festival organiser and/or a policy-maker and/or a scholar. One might even move from one of these professional occupations to any other(s). As networks of relationality, collaborations and friendships crossover analytically separated institutional locations, thereby complementing traditional analyses of festival circuits and stakeholders. Instead of separating curators from filmmakers, scholars, and festival organisers, friendships as networks reveal what could be gained in taking seriously the interplay between various forms of institutional location. As a “labour of love”, festival organising entails a form of collaboration that can potentially be productive, a mode of relationality that largely crossovers existing circuits and participates in the shaping of cinematic cultures.

Figure 1.: Greyson’s (main) collaborators and their role in Inside/OUT & Images (until 2000).

 

Name	Participation in:	(main) collaborations with Greyson
Achtman, Michael	Inside/OUT: screening committee (1997)	– Un©ut (1997, screened that year)
Campbell, Colin	Inside/OUT: advisory board* (1994-1995), board of directors (1996)*. Images: board of directors (1991), advisory board (1994-1996)	– The Jungle Boy (1985) – You Taste American (1986) – Moscow Does Not Believe in Queers (1986) – A Moffie Called Simon (1986) – The ADS epidemic (1987) – Urinal (1988)
Cass, Robin	Inside/OUT: jury (1998), advisory board (1999-2000)*	– Zero Patience (1993) – Lilies (1996)
Day, Dennis	Inside/OUT: trailer (1997)*	– Trailer, Inside/OUT (1997) – Un©ut (1997, screened that year)
Diamond, Sara	Images: guest programmer (1989), advisory board (1994-1999)	– Herr (1998)
D’oliveira, Damon	Inside/OUT: Jury (1999)	– Zero Patience (1993) – Un©ut (1997) – The Laws of Enclosures (1999) – Proteus (2003)
Douglas, Debbie	Inside/OUT: advisory board (1994-1995)*, board of director (1996*, 1998)	– Zero Patience (1993) – AIDS Cable Access Project (1980s)
Durand, Doug	Images: Board of Directors (1993-1994)	– The Visitation (1979)
Findlay, David	Images: Director (1995)	– Kipling Meets the Cowboys (1985) – A Moffie Called Simon (1986) – Andy Warhol’s Blow Job (New York and Toronto) (1989)
Flanders, Elle	Inside/OUT: director (1997), Images: board of directors (1998-1999)	– Covered (2009) – Toronto declaration (protests against TIFF as part of the BDS campaign)
Foster, Steve	Images: Jury (1997)	– Captifs d’Amour (2010) – The Ballad of Roy and Silo (2010)
Fung, Richard	Inside/OUT: advisory board (1994-1995)*, Inside/OUT: coordinator (1997), Inside/OUT: programming (1998, 2000), Images: board of directors (1988-89, 1991), programmer (1992)	– Kipling Meets the Cowboys (1985) – Zero Patience (1993) – Rex v. Singh (2009) – Fig Trees (2009) Greyson also collaborated on several of Fung’s films (for instance, as a camera operator on the 1986 Chinese Characters).
Kazimi, Ali	Images: board of directors (1991-1994), programmer (1992)	– Rex v. Singh (2009) – Fig Trees (2009)
Lee, Anita	Images: Board of directors (1996-1997)	– Proteus (2003)
McIntosh, David	Images: Jury (1992)	– A Moffie called Simon (1986) – Urinal (1988)
Moores, Marg	Images: Board of directors (1989, 1991-1996)	– The First Draft (1980)
Paterson, Andrew	Images: Jury (1989)	– Zero Patience (1993) – Fuse (magazine)
Raffé, Alexandra	Inside/OUT: Advisory Board (1994-1995; 1998-2000)*	– Zero Patience (1993)
Rashid, Ian Iqbal	Inside/OUT: organising team (1994-1995)*	– Bolo Bolo! (1990)
Roche, David	Inside/OUT: member of the founding collective (1990)	– You taste American (1986) – The Pink Pimpernel (1989 – Screened in 1991 at Inside/OUT) – Zero Patience (1993)
Steele, Lisa [Vtape: Founder]	Inside/OUT: advisory board (1994-1995)*, Images: Board of Directors (1988), Guest programmer (1992), staff (1999)	– Kipling meets the cowboys (1985) – Collaborator on Centerfold / Fuse – Vtape: Greyson’s distributor
Tomczak, Kim [Vtape: Founder]	Images: Board of Directors / founder / programmer (1988-1994)	– Vtape: Greyson’s distributor – Have collaborated on several exhibitions. Among others: Paris’ 11th Biennale (1980), Powerplant’s 1987 Toronto : A play of History. – Appears with Greyson on several tapes, such as Hoolboom’s 2006 Fascination.
Travassos, Almerinda	Images: Jury (1991)	– Urinal (1988) – The Making of Monsters (1991)
Waugh, Tom	Images: Guest programmer (1989)	– Full Frontal Nudity Expert (among others) – Cameo in several of Greyson’s films and videos, extensive interview in Un©ut (1997)
Yael, b.h.	Images: Board of Directors (1989, 1991-1995), programmer (1992)	– Toronto Declaration

* : Greyson participated, that year, in the organisation of this festival.

 

Notes

[1] Skadi Loist, “Precarious Cultural Work: About the Organization of (Queer) Film Festivals,” Screen 52, no. 2 (2011): 268–73.

[2] Liz Czach, “Affective Labor and the Work of Film Festival Programming,” in Film Festivals: History, Theory, Method, Practice, ed. Marijke de Valck, Brendan Kredell, and Skadi Loist (Routledge, 2016), 196.

[3] Antoine Damiens, “Festivals, Uncut: Queer/Ing Festival Studies, Curating Queerness” (PhD diss., Concordia University, 2018).

[4] In this article, I use the term “cinematic cultures” instead of “film cultures” to include both celluloid and video formats.

[5] B. Ruby Rich, Chick Flicks: Theories and Memories of the Feminist Film Movement (Duke University Press, 1998), 3.

[6] Marijke de Valck, Film Festivals: From European Geopolitics to Global Cinephilia (Amsterdam University Press, 2007), 101.

[7] Dina Iordanova, “The Film Festival Circuit,” in Film Festival Yearbook I : The Festival Circuit, ed. Dina Iordanova and Ragan Rhyne (St Andrews Film Studies, 2009), 33.

[8] Ragan Rhyne, “Film Festival Circuits and Stakeholders,” in Film Festival Yearbook I: The Festival Circuit, ed. Dina Iordanova and Ragan Rhyne (St Andrews Film Studies, 2009), 9.

[9] Michel Foucault, “Friendship as a Way of Life,” in Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, ed. Paul Rabinow, trans. Robert Hurley (The New Press, 1982), 135–40. [Emphasis: mine]

[10] From the early 1980s to the mid-1990s, academic conferences on gay and lesbian issues often included a screening programme akin to a festival. Conversely, LGBT festivals of the period often featured several academic talks. In using the same term to designate both academic and cinematic circuits, I underscore the productive interplay between festival organising and academic knowledge production which participated in shaping the gay and lesbian cinematic cultures of the 1980s. See: Damiens, “Festivals, Uncut.”

[11] Susan Lord, “Fables of Empire: The Intimate Histories of John Greyson,” in The Perils of Pedagogy: The Works of John Greyson, ed. Brenda Longfellow, Scott MacKenzie and Thomas Waugh (McGill-Queen’s University Press-, 2013), 137.

[12] Larry Horne and John Ramirez, “Conference Report: The UCLA Gay and Lesbian Media Conference,” Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media 29 (1984).

[13] Antoine Damiens, “The Queer Film Ecosystem: Symbolic Economy, Festivals and Queer Cinema’s Legs,” Studies in European Cinema 15, no. 1 (2018).

[14] Jump Cut, “Alternative Cinema Conference: Documents from Caucuses and Workshops,” Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, no. 22 (1980): 34–37.

[15] Peter Biskind et al., “Alternative Cinema Conference Times Seven: Jump Cut Editors’ Individual Perspectives,” Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, no. 29 (1979): 37–40.

[16] Jump Cut, “Alternative Cinema Conference: Documents from Caucuses and Workshops” It is worth noting that members of the Lesbian and Gay Male Caucus consulted with other minority groups, in effect enacting a politics of solidarity typical of the 1980s.

[17] beverley Philadelphia and wendy stevens, “Why Protest Windows?,” Off Our Backs 10, no. 4 (1980): 9, 13, 20.

[18] The film was perceived as promoting negative depictions of necessarily sad gay men. Furthermore, Friedkin had publicly discussed his preliminary research on Fire Island in a 1975 lecture at the New School, recalling with disdain being confused at the touristic attractions the gay vacation spot offers – namely “200 to 300 guys in daisy-chain [sic], balling each other in the ass [in the Meat Rack].” See: Edward Guthmann, “The Cruising Controversy: William Friedkin vs. the Gay Community,” Cineaste 10, no. 3 (1980): 2–4.

[19] Future research will address the politics of video festivals, a topic which has surprisingly been ignored by festival scholars.

[20] In particular in The First Draft (1980), a tape which “looks at the limitation of constructing alternative media within a dominant culture” through a video aesthetics. See: Brenda Longfellow, Scott MacKenzie, and Thomas Waugh, The Perils of Pedagogy: The Works of John Greyson (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2013), 503.

[21] National Association for Lesbian and Gay Filmmakers, “Dear Friends…,” Winter 1981, Box 13. Folder National Association for Lesbian and Gay Filmmakers. International Gay Information Center Organizational Files Collection. Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library.

[22] Steve Forgione, “Organizing on the Left: Some Thoughts on the Lesbian/Gay Struggle,” New Political Science 1, no. 4 (1980): 74–75.

[23] National Association for Lesbian and Gay Filmmakers, “Meeting Minutes, June 28th,” n/d, Box 13. Folder National Association for Lesbian and Gay Filmmakers. International Gay Information Center Organizational Files Collection. Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library.

[24] Stefan Pevnik, “Gay Filmmakers Confront Media Homophobia in the US,” The Advocate, November 26, 1981.

[25] “Eggo Film Festival 1983 – Southampton College, Fine Arts,” 1983, Folder Film festivals 1900-2012, ONE Subject Files Collection. Coll2012.001. The ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at the USC Libraries.

[26] Foundation for Independent Film and Video, “Agenda,” The Independent 5, no. 1 (March 1982): 24 Also known as “prognosis for gay and lesbian independent film”; see: Thomas Waugh, “Notes on Greyzone,” in The Perils of Pedagogy: The Works of John Greyson, ed. Brenda Longfellow, Scott MacKenzie and Thomas Waugh (McGill-Queen’s University MQUP, 2013), 37.

[27] UCLA Gay & Lesbian Media Festival, “UCLA Gay & Lesbian Media Festival,” 1983, Folder Film Festivals — Outfest, The ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at the USC Libraries.

[28] Bad Object-Choices, How Do I Look? : Queer Film and Video (Bay Press, 1991), 11. In itself, the fact that How Do I Look? is remembered as a conference (and not a festival) exemplifies quite well the erasure of festivals organised in the margins of the contemporary queer circuit. I analyse this issue in: Damiens, “Festivals, Uncut”.

[29] Martha Gever, Pratibha Parmar, and John Greyson, Queer Looks (Routledge, 1993).

[30] Martha Gever, Pratibha Parmar, and John Greyson, “On a Queer Day You Can See Forever,” in Queer Looks: Perspectives on Lesbian and Gay Film and Video, ed. Martha Gever, John Greyson and Pratibha Parmar (Routledge, 1993), xiv–xv.

[31] Waugh, “Notes on Greyzone.”

[32] Nancy Patterson, “Curating Video,” Cinema Canada, March 1987, 14–15.

[33] Will Straw, “Cultural Scenes,” Loisir et société/Society and Leisure 27, no. 2 (2004): 412.

[34] Brenda Cossman, Censorship and the Arts: Law, Controversy, Debate, Facts (Ontario Association of Art Galleries, 1995), 102.

[35] Jay Scott, “Ending on a Negative Note: Censor Board Accused of ‘Attempting to Destroy Festival,’” The Globe and Mail, September 20, 1982, 11; “Fest of Fests May Get New Deal from Censors,” Cinema Canada 145 (1987): 63.

[36] John Greyson, “Don’t Cry for Me, Project P,” in Suggestive Poses: Artists and Critics Respond to Censorship, ed. Lorraine Johnson and John Greyson (Toronto Photographers Workshop and The Riverbank Press, 1997), 2–3 [Emphasis in the original].

[37] Ger Zielinski, “Furtive, Steady Glances: On the Emergence & Cultural Politics of Lesbian & Gay Film Festivals” (PhD diss., McGill, 2008), 16.

[38] Cossman, Censorship and the Arts, 23–23.

[39] “Calendar of Events in Toronto from Monday April 22 to Thursday May 31,” The Body Politic, no. 114 (May 1985): 25.

[40] John Greyson, “Security Blankets: Sex, Video, and the Police,” in Queer Looks: Perspectives on Lesbian and Gay Film and Video, ed. Martha Gever, John Greyson and Pratibha Parmar (Routledge, 1993), 383–94.

[41] Dot Tuer, “Mirroring Identities: Two Decades of Video Art in English-Canada,” in Mirror Machine: Video and Identity, ed. Janine Marchessault (YYZ Books, 1995), 123.

[42] Philip Monk, “Picturing the Toronto Art Community: The Queen Street Years,” C Magazine 59 (1998).

[43] Geoffrey Shea, “The 1986 New Work Show,” Cinema Canada, November 1986, 33–35; Patterson, “Curating Video.”

[44] Phil Van Steenburgh, “‘Habits’ by YYZ, Toronto: Invitation to a Screening.,” Cinema Canada, August 1986, 26–27.

[45] Lord, “Fables of Empire: The Intimate Histories of John Greyson,” 137.

[46] Dipti Gupta and Janine Marchessault, “Film Festivals as Urban Encounter and Cultural Traffic,” in Urban Enigmas: Montreal, Toronto, and the Problem of Comparing Cities, ed. Johanne Sloan (McGill Queen’s University Press, 2007), 251.

[47] Tom Warner, Never Going Back: A History of Queer Activism in Canada (University of Toronto Press, 2002), 326.

[48] Zielinski, “Furtive, Steady Glances,” 116.

[49] Brenda Longfellow, “Surfing the Toronto New Wave: Policy, Paradigm Shifts and Post-Nationalism,” in Self Portraits: The Cinemas of Canada Since Telefilm, ed. André Loiselle and Tom McSorley (Canadian Film Institute/Institut canadien du film, 2006), 194.

[50] According to Ger Zielinski, the first festival might have happened as early as 1980. Zielinski, “Furtive, Steady Glances,” 144n114.

[51] “Gay Fest in T.O.,” Cinema Canada News Update 1 (November 10, 1986): 3.

[52] Kevin Dowler, “In the Bedrooms of the Nation: State Scrutiny and the Funding of Dirty Art,” in Money, Value, Art: State Funding, Free Markets, Big Pictures, ed. Sally McKay and Andrew J. Paterson (YYZ Books, 2001), 34.

[53] Joceline Andersen, “From the Ground up: Transforming the inside out LGBT Film and Video Festival of Toronto,” Canadian Journal of Film Studies 21, no. 1 (2012): 40.

[54] Cossman, Censorship and the Arts, 31.

[55] Mary Louise Adams, “Gay Clout Turns inside Out,” Herizons 7, no. 4 (1997): 14; David Roche, “Queer Film Fest Is Homeless. Euclid Collapse Forces the Inside Out Collective Elsewhere,” Xtra!, November 1993; Dowler, “In the Bedrooms of the Nation: State Scrutiny and the Funding of Dirty Art,” 34.

[56] Similar attempts to withdraw funding from gay and lesbian cultural organisations were made in 1997. See: Andrew Paterson, “Private Parts in Public Places,” Fuse 12, no. 4 (1989): 43–44.

[57] Northern Vision Collective, “Images 88,” 1988, 3.

[58] I limited myself to the organisational team. A similar argument could be made through an analysis of festivals’ acknowledgement sections and film selections. For instance, Inside/OUT’s 1993 catalogue reads like a credit from a tape by Greyson and/or a who’s who of his collaborators — referencing among others Kay Armatage, Desh Pardesh, Doug Durand, Ellen Flanders, Richard Fung, Fuse magazine, Ian Rashid, Gita Saxena, Euclid Theatre, Full Frame, Vtape and YYZ.

[59] Lord, “Fables of Empire: The Intimate Histories of John Greyson,” 136.

[60] Mike Hoolboom, “Audio Visual Judo,” in The Perils of Pedagogy: The Works of John Greyson, ed. Brenda Longfellow, Scott MacKenzie and Thomas Waugh (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2013), 209–10.

[61] For instance, Greyson wrote the introduction to Thomas Waugh’s anthology The Fruit Machine: John Greyson, “Foreword,” in The Fruit Machine: Twenty Years of Writings on Queer Cinema, by Thomas Waugh (Duke University Press, 2000), ix–xii. His academic writings further preface several books on censorship and/or AIDS, such as: Greyson, “Don’t Cry for Me, Project P”. Conversely, B. Ruby Rich wrote the foreword to an anthology on Greyson: B. Ruby Rich, “Foreword,” in The Perils of Pedagogy: The Works of John Greyson, ed. Brenda Longfellow, Scott MacKenzie and Thomas Waugh (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2013), xv–xvi. Significantly, this chapter is immediately followed by Waugh’s own contribution, which theorises his friendship with Greyson: Waugh, “Notes on Greyzone.”

[62] Thomas Waugh and Chris Straayer, “Queer Film and Video Festival Forum, Take Two: Critics Speak Out,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 12, no. 4 (2006): 599.

 

Notes on the Contributor

Antoine Damiens holds a PhD in Film Studies from Concordia University (Montréal). His dissertation interrogates the historiographical and political project of festival studies through an analysis of minor, ephemeral, LGBT festivals. Antoine serves as the co-chair of SCMS’ Film & Media Festival Scholarly Interest Group and as Synoptique’s festival review editor. He has participated in organizing various festivals, among which Cannes’ Queer Palm.

 

Bibliography 

Adams, Mary Louise. “Gay Clout Turns inside Out.” Herizons 7, no. 4 (1997): 14.

Andersen, Joceline. “From the Ground up: Transforming the inside out LGBT Film and Video Festival of Toronto.” Canadian Journal of Film Studies 21, no. 1 (2012): 38–57.

Bad Object-Choices. How Do I Look? : Queer Film and Video. Bay Press, 1991.

Biskind, Peter, Michelle Citron, Chuck Kleinhans, Julia Lesage, B. Ruby Rich, Peter Steven, and Thomas Waugh. “Alternative Cinema Conference Times Seven: Jump Cut Editors’ Individual Perspectives.” Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, no. 29 (1979): 37–40.

“Calendar of Events in Toronto from Monday April 22 to Thursday May 31.” The Body Politic, no. 114 (May 1985): 25.

Cossman, Brenda. Censorship and the Arts: Law, Controversy, Debate, Facts. Ontario Association of Art Galleries, 1995.

Czach, Liz. “Affective Labor and the Work of Film Festival Programming.” In Film Festivals: History, Theory, Method, Practice, edited by Marijke de Valck, Brendan Kredell, and Skadi Loist, 196–208. Routledge, 2016.

Damiens, Antoine. “Festivals, Uncut: Queer/Ing Festival Studies, Curating Queerness.” PhD diss., Concordia University, 2018.

———. “The Queer Film Ecosystem: Symbolic Economy, Festivals and Queer Cinema’s Legs.” Studies in European Cinema, 15, no.1 (2018).

de Valck, Marijke. Film Festivals: From European Geopolitics to Global Cinephilia. Amsterdam University Press, 2007.

Dowler, Kevin. “In the Bedrooms of the Nation: State Scrutiny and the Funding of Dirty Art.” In Money, Value, Art: State Funding, Free Markets, Big Pictures, edited by Sally McKay and Andrew J. Paterson, 29–49. YYZ Books, 2001.

“Eggo Film Festival 1983 – Southampton College, Fine Arts,” 1983. Folder Film festivals 1900-2012, ONE Subject Files Collection. Coll2012.001. The ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at the USC Libraries.

“Fest of Fests May Get New Deal from Censors.” Cinema Canada 145 (1987): 63.

Forgione, Steve. “Organizing on the Left: Some Thoughts on the Lesbian/Gay Struggle.” New Political Science 1, no. 4 (1980): 74–75.

Foucault, Michel. “Friendship as a Way of Life.” In Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, edited by Paul Rabinow, translated by Robert Hurley, 135–40. The New Press, 1982.

Foundation for Independent Film and Video. “Agenda.” The Independent 5, no. 1 (March 1982): 24.

“Gay Fest in T.O.” Cinema Canada News Update 1 (1986): 3.

Gever, Martha, Pratibha Parmar, and John Greyson. “On a Queer Day You Can See Forever.” In Queer Looks: Perspectives on Lesbian and Gay Film and Video, edited by Martha Gever, John Greyson and Pratibha Parma., xiii–xv. Routledge, 1993.

———. Queer Looks. Routledge, 1993.

Greyson, John. “Don’t Cry for Me, Project P.” In Suggestive Poses: Artists and Critics Respond to Censorship, edited by Lorraine Johnson and John Greyson., 1–5. Toronto Photographers Workshop and The Riverbank Press, 1997.

———. “Foreword.” In The Fruit Machine: Twenty Years of Writings on Queer Cinema, by Thomas Waugh, ix–xii. Duke University Press, 2000.

———. “Security Blankets: Sex, Video, and the Police.” In Queer Looks: Perspectives on Lesbian and Gay Film and Video, edited by Martha Gever, John Greyson and Pratibha Parmar, 383–94. Routledge, 1993.

Gupta, Dipti, and Janine Marchessault. “Film Festivals as Urban Encounter and Cultural Traffic.” In Urban Enigmas: Montreal, Toronto, and the Problem of Comparing Cities, edited by Johanne Sloan., 239–54. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2007.

Guthmann, Edward. “The Cruising Controversy: William Friedkin vs. the Gay Community.” Cineaste 10, no. 3 (1980): 2–8.

Hoolboom, Mark. “Audio Visual Judo.” In The Perils of Pedagogy: The Works of John Greyson, edited by Brenda Longfellow, Scott MacKenzie and Thomas Waugh, 209–15. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2013.

Horne, Larry, and John Ramirez. “Conference Report: The UCLA Gay and Lesbian Media Conference.” Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media 29 (1984).

Iordanova, Dina. “The Film Festival Circuit.” In Film Festival Yearbook I : The Festival Circuit, edited by Dina Iordanova and Ragan Rhyne, 23–39. St Andrews Film Studies, 2009.

Jump Cut. “Alternative Cinema Conference: Documents from Caucuses and Workshops.” Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, no. 22 (1980): 34–37.

Loist, Skadi. “Precarious Cultural Work: About the Organization of (Queer) Film Festivals.” Screen 52, no. 2 (2011): 268–73.

Longfellow, Brenda. “Surfing the Toronto New Wave: Policy, Paradigm Shifts and Post-Nationalism.” In Self Portraits: The Cinemas of Canada Since Telefilm, edited by André Loiselle and Tom McSorley., 167–202. Canadian Film Institute/Institut canadien du film, 2006.

Longfellow, Brenda, Scott MacKenzie, and Thomas Waugh. The Perils of Pedagogy: The Works of John Greyson. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2013.

Lord, Susan. “Fables of Empire: The Intimate Histories of John Greyson.” In The Perils of Pedagogy: The Works of John Greyson, edited by Brenda Longfellow, Scott MacKenzie and Thomas Waugh., 135–47. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2013.

Monk, Philip. “Picturing the Toronto Art Community: The Queen Street Years.” C Magazine 59 (1998).

National Association for Lesbian and Gay Filmmakers. “Dear Friends…,” Winter 1981. Box 13. Folder National Association for Lesbian and Gay Filmmakers. International Gay Information Center Organizational Files Collection. Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library.

———. “Meeting Minutes, June 28th,” n/d. Box 13. Folder National Association for Lesbian and Gay Filmmakers. International Gay Information Center Organizational Files Collection. Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library.

Northern Vision Collective. “Images 88,” 1988.

Paterson, Andrew. “Private Parts in Public Places.” Fuse 12, no. 4 (1989): 43–44.

Patterson, Nancy. “Curating Video.” Cinema Canada, March 1987, 14–15.

Pevnik, Stefan. “Gay Filmmakers Confront Media Homophobia in the US.” The Advocate, November 26, 1981.

Philadelphia, beverley, and wendy stevens. “Why Protest Windows?” Off Our Backs 10, no. 4 (1980): 9, 13, 20.

Rhyne, Ragan. “Film Festival Circuits and Stakeholders.” In Film Festival Yearbook I: The Festival Circuit, edited by Dina Iordanova and Ragan Rhyne, 9–22. St Andrews Film Studies, 2009.

Rich, B. Ruby. Chick Flicks: Theories and Memories of the Feminist Film Movement. Duke University Press, 1998.

———. “Foreword.” In The Perils of Pedagogy: The Works of John Greyson, edited by Brenda Longfellow, Scott MacKenzie and Thomas Waugh., xv–xvi. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2013.

Roche, David. “Queer Film Fest Is Homeless. Euclid Collapse Forces the Inside Out Collective Elsewhere.” Xtra!, November 1993.

Scott, Jay. “Ending on a Negative Note: Censor Board Accused of ‘Attempting to Destroy Festival.’” The Globe and Mail, September 20, 1982, 11.

Shea, Geoffrey. “The 1986 New Work Show.” Cinema Canada, November 1986, 33–35.

Tuer, Dot. “Mirroring Identities: Two Decades of Video Art in English-Canada.” In Mirror Machine: Video and Identity, edited by Janine Marchessault, 107–25. YYZ Books, 1995.

UCLA Gay & Lesbian media Festival. “UCLA Gay & Lesbian Media Festival,” 1983. Folder Film Festivals — Outfest, The ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at the USC Libraries.

Van Steenburgh, Phil. “‘Habits’ by YYZ, Toronto: Invitation to a Screening.” Cinema Canada, August 1986, 26–27.

Warner, Tom. Never Going Back: A History of Queer Activism in Canada. University of Toronto Press, 2002.

Waugh, Thomas. “Notes on Greyzone.” In The Perils of Pedagogy: The Works of John Greyson, edited by Brenda Longfellow, Scott MacKenzie and Thomas Waugh, 19–42. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2013.

Waugh, Thomas, and Chris Straayer. “Queer Film and Video Festival Forum, Take Two: Critics Speak Out.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 12, no. 4 (2006): 599–625.

Zielinski, Ger. “Furtive, Steady Glances: On the Emergence & Cultural Politics of Lesbian & Gay Film Festivals.” PhD diss., McGill, 2008. 

Filmography

Dennis Day and John Greyson. Trailer – Inside/OUT (1997, Tonronto, ON: Inside/OUT), 35mn.

William Friedkin. Cruising (1980, Beverly Hills, CA: United Artists), Film.

Richard Fung. Chinese Characters (1986, Chicago, IL: Video Data Bank), Video.

Richard Fung, John Greyson, and Ali Kazimi. Rex v. Singh (2009, Vancouver, BC: Out on Screen), DV.

John Greyson. The Visitation (1979, undistributed), Video.

———. The First Draft (1980, Toronto, ON: Vtape), Video.

———. The Jungle Boy (1985, Toronto, ON: Vtape), Video.

———. Kippling Meets the Cowboys (1985, Toronto, ON: Vtape), Video.

———. You taste American (1986, Toronto, ON: Vtape), Video.

———. Moscow Does Not Believe in Queers (1986, Toronto, ON: Vtape), Video.

———. A Moffie Called Simon (1986, Toronto, ON: Vtape), Video.

———. The ADS epidemic (1987, Toronto, ON: Vtape), Video.

———. Urinal (1988), San Francisco, CA: Frameline Distribution), Video transferred to 16mn.

———. Andy Warhol’s Blow Job (New York and Toronto) (1989), Video.

———. The Pink Pimpernel (1989, Toronto, ON: Vtape), Video.

———. The Making of Monsters (1991), 16mn.

———. Zero Patience (1993, Toronto, ON: Cineplex Odeon Distribution), Super-16 mn, released 35mn.

———. Lillies (1996, Toronto, ON: Alliance Atlantis), 35mn.

———. Un©ut (1997, Toronto, ON: Vtape), D-Beta transferred to 16mn.

———. Herr (1998), DV.

———. The Laws of Enclosures (2000, Toronto, ON: Momentum Pictures), 35mn.

———. Proteus (2003, Culver City, CA: Strand Releasing), D-Beta transferred to 35mn.

———. Covered (2009), DV.

———. Fig Trees (2009), DV.

———. Captifs d’Amour (2010), 16mn/DV.

———. The Ballad of Roy and Silo (2010), DV.

Mike Hoolboom. Fascination (2006, Chicago, IL: Video Data Bank), DV.

Ian Iqbal Rashid and Gita Saxena. Bolo Bolo!: Talking About Silence, AIDS and Gay Sexuality (1990, San Francisco, CA : National Asian American Telecommunications Association), Video.

Gordon Willis. Windows (1980, Beverly Hills, CA: United Artists), Film.