Laugh in the Dark | |
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Directed by | Justine Pimlott |
Produced by | Justine Pimlott |
Starring | Gary Colwell Don Morden Doris Mehegan |
Release date |
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Running time | 47 minutes |
Country | Canada |
Language | English |
Laugh in the Dark is a Canadian documentary film, directed by Justine Pimlott and released in 1999. [1] The film profiles a group of gay men who, in response to the HIV/AIDS crisis of the early 1980s, moved to the faded resort town of Crystal Beach, Ontario with an eye to reviving it as a gay resort comparable to Provincetown or Fire Island; [2] spearheaded by Gary Colwell and Don Morden, the group launched a bed and breakfast, a restaurant and a drag cabaret. [3]
The film's name is taken from a dark ride of the same name that operated at Crystal Beach Park.
In his book Romance of Transgression in Canada: Queering Sexualities, Nations, Cinemas, Thomas Waugh called the film "one of the most effective and affecting elegies in Canadian queer cinema." [1]
The film premiered at the Inside Out Film and Video Festival in 1999, [2] winning the award for Best Canadian Film. It was subsequently screened at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival in 2000, winning the award for Best Film on Social Issues. [4]
Winter Kept Us Warm is a Canadian romantic drama film, released in 1965. The title comes from the fifth line of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land.
Amazones d'Hier, Lesbiennes d'Aujourd'hui is the name of a quarterly French language magazine published starting 1982 by a lesbian collective in Montreal made of Louise Turcotte, Danielle Charest, Genette Bergeron and Ariane Brunet.
Rodrigue Jean is a Canadian film director, screenwriter, and producer of Acadian origin. He has been a theatre director, dancer and choreographer.
Too Outrageous! is a 1987 Canadian comedy film directed and written by Richard Benner and starring Craig Russell as Robin Turner, a drag queen. It is based on a story by Margaret Gibson.
Thomas Waugh is a Canadian critic, lecturer, author, actor, and activist, best known for his extensive work on documentary film and eroticism in the history of LGBT cinema and art. A professor emeritus at Concordia University, he taught 41 years in the film studies program of the School of Cinema and held a research chair in documentary film and sexual representation. He was also the director of the Concordia HIV/AIDS Project, 1993-2017, a program providing a platform for research and conversations involving HIV/AIDS in the Montréal area.
Maya Gallus is a Canadian documentary filmmaker, and co-founder of Red Queen Productions with Justine Pimlott. Her films have been screened at international film festivals, including Toronto International Film Festival, Montreal World Film Festival, Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, Sheffield Doc/Fest, SEOUL International Women’s Film Festival, Singapore International Film Festival, This Human World Film Festival (Vienna) and Women Make Waves (Taiwan), among others. Her work has also screened at the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), Donostia Kultura, San Sebastián and Canada House UK, as well as theatrically in Tokyo, San Francisco, Key West and Toronto, and been broadcast around the world. She has won numerous awards, including a Gemini Award for Best Direction for Girl Inside, and has been featured in The Guardian, UK; Ms. (Magazine), Curve (Magazine), Bust (Magazine), Salon (Magazine), POV and The Walrus, among others. She is a Director/Writer alumna of the Canadian Film Centre and a participant in Women in the Director’s Chair. She will be honoured with a "Focus On" retrospective at the 2017 Hot Docs festival.
Justine Pimlott is a Canadian documentary filmmaker, and co-founder of Red Queen Productions with Maya Gallus. She began her career apprenticing as a sound recordist with Studio D, the women’s studio at the National Film Board of Canada (NFB), in Montreal. As a documentary filmmaker, her work has won numerous awards, including Best Social Issue Documentary at Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival and Best Canadian Film at Inside Out Film and Video Festival for Laugh in the Dark, which critic Thomas Waugh described, in The Romance of Transgression in Canada as "one of the most effective and affecting elegies in Canadian queer cinema." Her films have screened internationally at Sheffield Doc/Fest, SEOUL International Women’s Film Festival, Women Make Waves (Taiwan), This Human World Film Festival (Vienna), Singapore International Film Festival, among others, and have been broadcast around the world.
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The Best of Secter and the Rest of Secter is a Canadian documentary film, directed by Joel Secter and released in 2005. The film centres on Joel Secter's uncle, filmmaker David Secter, particularly but not exclusively on the impact of his 1965 film Winter Kept Us Warm.
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