Analogue Revolution: How Feminist Media Changed the World by Marusya Bociurkiw

Presented by the Dave Barber Cinematheque with support from MAWA

When Zainub Verjee, a Vancouver-based film programmer, started the InVisible Colours women of colour film festival in 1988, she fully expected it to continue for years. So did Linda Abrahams (Matriart Journal) and Zanana Akande (Tiger Lily Magazine). Cutbacks, racism and technological change have decimated a sophisticated, world-changing feminist media movement.

This feature-length documentary traces the rise and fall of the analogue feminist communications that preceded the MeToo era. From Halifax to Vancouver, feminist storytellers of the 1970s to 90s took hold of cutting-edge media technology to document everything from violence toward women to how to insert a diaphragm. The film features notable Canadian feminists like Studio D’s Bonnie Sherr Klein (Montreal/Vancouver) and Sylvia D. Hamilton (Halifax), and print collectives like Press Gang (Vancouver) and Our Lives, who published Canada’s first Black women’s newspaper (Toronto). Verjee tells the story of Canada’s first women of colour film festival; Nora Randall describes what it meant to create Pedestal, the first feminist newspaper in Canada. Rare archival footage, like that of 70s feminist gatherings in Montreal, lead to the film’s climax: draconian cutbacks to women’s and lesbian organizations across Canada, following the massacre of feminists at the École Polytechnique in Montreal on December 6, 1989. The film concludes with a resurgence: younger BIPOC feminists (Ella Cooper of Black Women Film!, Didhood Collective) using analogue strategies to create new feminist digital networks.

Marusya Bociurkiw got her start in media with the 80s feminist video collectives Women’s Media Alliance and Emma Productions. Since then, she has directed or co-directed 10 videos and films and has authored six books. Her most recent film, the award-winning This Is Gay Propaganda: LGBT Rights and the War in Ukraine (Canada, 2015), screened in 12 countries and has been translated into four languages.