Winter Kept Us Warm

Last updated

Winter Kept Us Warm
Winter Kept Us Warm movie poster.jpg
Directed by David Secter
Written byDavid Secter, Ian Porter, John Clute
Produced byDavid Secter
Starring
Cinematography Robert Fresco, Ernest T. L. Meershoek
Edited byMichael Foytényi
Music by Paul Hoffert
Distributed byFilmmakers Distribution Center
Release date
  • September 27, 1965 (1965-09-27)
Running time
81 minutes
CountryCanada
LanguageEnglish
BudgetCAD 8,000

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 .

Contents

An independent film written, directed, and funded by David Secter, it occupies a unique place in the history of Canadian cinema as the first English-language Canadian film screened at the Cannes Film Festival. [1] The film was screened at the 1966 festival during the Semaine de la critique, a special non-competitive portion of the festival at which works of new filmmakers are shown. [2] Its debut was as the opening film of the Commonwealth Film Festival in Cardiff, Wales on September 27, 1965. [3]

The film stars John Labow as Doug Harris and Henry Tarvainen as Peter Saarinen, two very different students at the University of Toronto, who develop a complex quasi-romantic friendship, and Joy Tepperman and Janet Amos as their girlfriends Bev and Sandra. [4] The film's gay subtext was carefully coded by Secter, who wrote the film based on his own experience falling in love with a male fellow student, but feared that a more explicitly gay film would not attract an audience. Even some of the film's cast have claimed in interviews that they did not know at the time that the film was actually about homosexuality. [5]

Production

The film received a $750 grant from the University of Toronto Students' Union, along with permission to film several key scenes at Hart House; [6] however, Secter had to fight the university administration for permission to film in other locations on campus. [5] As well, the film was declined production grants from the Canada Council, the Ontario Arts Council and the National Film Board of Canada. [5] Secter found much of the cast by placing a classified advertisement in the university's student newspaper The Varsity ; however, for technical crew he largely had to go to Ryerson Polytechnic's film studies department. [6]

According to Secter, "at the time I made it the very idea of making movies in Canada was an alien concept". [5] His only prior film experience was the eight-minute short film Love with the Proper Guppy. [3] Having been a film reviewer for The Varsity, he has stated that he was inspired by the French New Wave: "A lot of those New Wave guys had started out as critics, and I thought, ‘Hey, if they can move from talking about movies to making movies, why can’t I?’" [5]

Critical response

The film was given a Special Jury Award at the Festival of Canadian Films in Montreal. [7]

Frank Morriss of The Globe and Mail noticed the "overtones of homosexuality" in Doug and Peter's friendship. He gave the film a moderately favourable review, writing that "when the two fall into a casual relationship, Labow's accent on having a good time, and Tarvainen's earnest desire to make good, has interest. It is when Tarvainen gains confidence and Labow's emotional feelings begin to run amuck, that the movie begins to go down the drain, and lose direction." He ultimately concluded, however, that the film "has enough in its favour to deserve the patronage of film fans who want to see what a group of university students can do with the challenge of a feature movie." [8]

Writing about the film for The Body Politic in 1982, Thomas Waugh expressed concern about the fact that gay-themed films of its era rarely depicted positive same-sex relationships, but instead usually centred on love triangles involving a woman; [4] while acknowledging that Winter Kept Us Warm reflected this trope, he complimented the film for portraying its women characters with greater integrity than usual for the genre. [4]

Legacy

Although not widely remembered among the general public, Winter Kept Us Warm is considered a major milestone in the Canadian film industry as one of the first Canadian films ever to attract international attention. Secter made a second film, The Offering , in 1966, one of the first Canadian films to depict an interracial romance. [2] Secter subsequently moved to the United States. In 1976, he directed the low budget sex comedy Getting Together , but subsequently left the film industry.

All four of the main cast members went on to noteworthy careers in arts and media, although only Amos continued to be known principally as an actor; Labow was a documentarian for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and TVOntario, Tarvainen became a noted theatre director, and Tepperman is a writer under the pen name Joy Fielding.

The film was screened at the 1984 Festival of Festivals as part of Front & Centre, a special retrospective program of artistically and culturally significant films from throughout the history of Canadian cinema. [9]

In the 1990s, Secter's nephew Joel Secter rented Getting Together, not knowing that his uncle had directed films. Seeing David's name in the credits, Joel contacted his uncle to talk about his film career. Those discussions ultimately led to Joel Secter's own debut as a filmmaker, the 2005 documentary The Best of Secter and the Rest of Secter . [10] Notable figures who discussed Secter and Winter Kept Us Warm in the documentary included David Cronenberg, Michael Ondaatje, Philip Glass, Ed Mirvish and Lloyd Kaufman. Cronenberg has identified Winter Kept Us Warm as a key influence in his own film career, noting that seeing a film shot in Canada by people he was acquainted with made him realize he could make a film too: "Secter had somehow hustled together a feature film that was intriguing because it was completely unprecedented. And then the film appeared, and I was stunned. Shocked. Exhilarated. It was an unbelievable experience. This movie was a very sweet film.” [11]

The film was released on DVD by TLA Video in early 2011. [12]

In 2015, the film was screened at Buddies in Bad Times during Toronto's Pride Week as the centrepiece of a selection of LGBT-themed Canadian films, to mark the launch of Thomas Waugh's Queer Media Database project. [13]

In 2023, Telefilm Canada announced that Winter Kept Us Warm was one of 23 titles that will be digitally restored under its new Canadian Cinema Reignited program to preserve classic Canadian films. [14]

In 2024, writer Chris Dupuis published a book about the film as part of the McGill-Queen's University Press Queer Film Classics series, which was launched at the Inside Out Film and Video Festival alongside a retrospective screening of the film. [15]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bruce LaBruce</span> Canadian filmmaker and artist

Bruce LaBruce is a Canadian artist, writer, filmmaker, photographer, and underground director based in Toronto.

<i>Ive Heard the Mermaids Singing</i> 1987 Canadian film by Patricia Rozema

I've Heard the Mermaids Singing is a 1987 Canadian comedy-drama film written and directed by Patricia Rozema and starring Sheila McCarthy, Paule Baillargeon, and Ann-Marie MacDonald. It was the first English-language Canadian feature film to win an award at the Cannes Film Festival.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Inside Out Film and Video Festival</span>

The Inside Out Film and Video Festival, also known as the Inside Out LGBT or LGBTQ Film Festival, is an annual Canadian film festival, which presents a program of LGBT-related film. The festival is staged in both Toronto and Ottawa. Founded in 1991, the festival is now the largest of its kind in Canada. Deadline dubbed it "Canada’s foremost LGBTQ film festival."

David Secter is a Canadian film director. He is best known for the 1965 film Winter Kept Us Warm, the first English Canadian film ever screened at the Cannes Film Festival. Widely considered a key milestone in the development of Canadian film, Winter Kept Us Warm was a gay-themed independent film written, directed and funded entirely by Secter, who is gay, while he was a student at the University of Toronto.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sturla Gunnarsson</span> Icelandic-Canadian film director (born 1951)

Sturla Gunnarsson is an Icelandic-Canadian film and television director and producer.

<i>Feelin Up</i> 1976 film by David Secter

Feelin' Up is a 1976 comedy film written and directed by David Secter and distributed by Troma Entertainment.

<i>Mr. Patman</i> 1980 Canadian film

Mr. Patman is a 1980 Canadian film directed by John Guillermin and starring James Coburn.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mike Hoolboom</span> Canadian filmmaker (born 1959)

Michael Hoolboom is a Canadian independent, experimental filmmaker. Having begun filmmaking at an early age, Hoolboom released his first major work, a "film that's not quite a film" entitled White Museum, in 1986. Although he continued to produce films, his rate of production improved drastically after he was diagnosed with HIV in 1988 or 1989; this gave a "new urgency" to his works. Since then he has made dozens of films, two of which have won Best Short Film at the Toronto International Film Festival. His films have also featured in more than 200 film festivals worldwide.

<i>Franks Cock</i> 1993 short film by Mike Hoolboom

Frank's Cock is a 1993 Canadian short film written and directed by Mike Hoolboom. The eight-minute production stars Callum Keith Rennie as an unnamed narrator who discusses his relationship with his partner, Frank. The two met while the narrator was a teenager and spent nearly ten years together. Frank has since been diagnosed with AIDS, and the narrator fears his death. The story was based on the experience of one of Hoolboom's friends at People With AIDS, which Hoolboom adapted after receiving a commission to create a short film about breaking up.

Jamie Kastner is a Canadian writer, director and documentary filmmaker based in Toronto, Canada. His company, Cave 7 Productions, produces both theatrical and television productions. Kastner is best known for his feature documentaries, including There Are No Fakes, which premiered at Hot Docs in 2019, The Skyjacker's Tale (2016) and The Secret Disco Revolution, both of which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.

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.

The Toronto New Wave refers to a loose-knit group of filmmakers from Toronto who came of age during the 1980s and early 1990s.

Hey, Happy! is a Canadian science fiction comedy film, directed by Noam Gonick and released in 2001.

Christopher's Movie Matinée is a Canadian documentary film, directed by Mort Ransen and released in 1968. Depicting the youth counterculture hippie movement in the Toronto district of Yorkville, the film was unusual in that it directly engaged the teenagers as active participants rather than subjects, depicting their own debates about what kind of film Ransen should make about them and incorporating footage directly filmed by the youth with personal video cameras. The film includes the group organizing a protest against Toronto Board of Control member Allan Lamport's efforts to crack down on the hippie movement in the city; it ends when the filmmakers are recalled to Montreal by the National Film Board of Canada after being accused in the Toronto press of instigating the protest rather than merely depicting it.

The Offering is a Canadian romantic drama film, directed by David Secter and released in 1966. One of the first Canadian films ever to depict an interracial relationship, the film portrays a romance between Mei-Lin, a dancer with a touring Peking opera company, and Gordon, a stagehand at the theatre in Toronto where the troupe is performing. Philip Givens, the real-life mayor of Toronto at the time the film was made, appears in the film as himself; the cast also includes Ellen Yamasaki and Marvin Goldhar.

<i>The Best of Secter and the Rest of Secter</i> 2005 Canadian documentary film

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Labow</span> Canadian film and television producer

John Avery Leon Labow was a Canadian film and television producer, most noted as a producer of documentaries for TVOntario.

The Stratford Film Festival was an annual film festival in Stratford, Ontario, Canada, which was staged from 1956 to 1961 and from 1971 to 1975. One of the first film festivals in North America ever to present international films, it was the preeminent film festival in the Southern Ontario region until the launch of the Festival of Festivals in 1976 resulted in a loss of arts funding and audience support that led the Stratford Film Festival to permanently cease operations that same year.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henry Tarvainen</span> Canadian actor and theatre director

Henry Tarvainen was a Canadian actor and theatre director from Toronto, Ontario, most noted as a Dora Mavor Moore Award nominee for Best Direction in a Play at the 1982 Dora Mavor Moore Awards for his production of Charles Tidler's Straight Ahead and Blind Dancers.

References

  1. ↑ "Queer pioneer". Montreal Mirror , January 3, 2002.
  2. 1 2 Martin Knelman, "He shoots The Offering in July". The Globe and Mail , May 19, 1966.
  3. 1 2 David Secter, "Lack of experience helps: How to make a do-it-yourself movie without money". The Globe and Mail , November 17, 1965.
  4. 1 2 3 Thomas Waugh, "Uncovering a forgotten Canadian gay film–from 1965". The Body Politic , May 1982. p. 36.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 Geoff Pevere, "David Secter, the Varsity visionary: How a low-budget student movie went to Cannes and influenced a generation of Toronto filmmakers". Toronto Star , June 25, 2011.
  6. 1 2 Ralph Hicklin, "Friendship and $750 main ingredients of campus film". The Globe and Mail , November 21, 1964.
  7. ↑ Rosemary Speirs, "Secter receives award". The Globe and Mail , August 6, 1966.
  8. ↑ Frank Morriss, "College-made film well worth seeing". The Globe and Mail , December 7, 1965.
  9. ↑ Jay Scott, "Mon Oncle Antoine No. 1 with critics". The Globe and Mail , August 2, 1984.
  10. ↑ Martin Knelman, "U of T star is born, lands in porn; '60s filmmaker went to Cannes, met Loren|. Toronto Star , May 18, 2005.
  11. ↑ "Winter Kept Us Warm (Web Exclusive)".
  12. ↑ Matthew Hays, "David Secter's Winter Kept Us Warm: Landmark 1965 gay Canadian film comes out on DVD". Xtra! , April 8, 2011.
  13. ↑ "Online database of queer Canadian movies launching at Toronto Pride". The Globe and Mail , June 24, 2015.
  14. ↑ Pat Mullen, "Oscar Winning Doc Leads List of Restored Canadian Classics". Point of View , May 9, 2023.
  15. ↑ Chris Dupuis, "The little-known story behind Canada's first queer film, Winter Kept Us Warm". CBC Arts, May 23, 2024.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.