GLR November-December 2024

with choppy editing and stilted dialogue. I left disap pointed and Winter quickly faded from my mind.” But when he saw it again years later, “my experience was rad ically different. An archaically dull picture that had barely sustained my attention was now a heart-wrenching portrait of longing, confusion, and unrequited love.” In judging the film, we must, as Dupuis points out, re alize that “Secter was creating the work at a time when homosexuality was a crime in both Canada and the U.S. He was working on a university campus, an environment just as homophobic as the broader culture, if not more so. And he wasn’t working within a queer community. ... Instead, he was collaborating with a team of straight peo ple at a straight institution, and so he had to consider the ramifications if the project were to ‘come out.’” Many of those involved with the making of the film, including the actors, were not aware of its gay themes. Moreover, Secter was anxious to make a commercially viable film that could be shown in major theater chains rather than only in art house cinemas. Winter Kept Us Warm is long overdue for a reassessment. As Canadian film historian, critic, and gay rights activist Thomas Waugh told Dupuis: “It’s so important for a film like this to be preserved, because it really speaks to what it was like to be gay in this time and place. It’s a way to pass on to future genera tions who have no other way to access it.” Happily, you can judge for yourself: the film is available for viewing on YouTube and on Internet Archive.

the film, which Variety praised for its “appealing handling of a heavily implied but not activated homosexuality.” And then the film virtually disappeared, largely because of its pre-Stonewall reluctance to deal directly with gay subject matter. With the more politically engaged queer films that emerged after Stonewall, the film was simply ignored. Dupuis recalls that when he first saw the film in the early 2000s, he was unimpressed: “At that time, I was trying to expand my know ledge of queer cultural history ... hoping for a life-changing ex perience. In the end all I saw was a glitchy black-and-white film Henry Tarvainen and John Labow in Winter Kept Us Warm , 1965.

November–December 2024

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