Noam Gonick on his documentary ‘Parade: Queer Acts of Love and Resistance’

Parade: Queer Acts of Love and Resistance will be making its Edmonton premiere on May 17 at the Metro Cinema. It is one of several queer films being shown as part of the Rainbow Visions Film Festival. The documentary shows Canada’s history of the 2SLGBTQI+ community’s struggle for their rights.

Noam Gonick, the director of the film, is a Winnipeg-based filmmaker. He said he thinks that “every queer filmmaker in Canada wants to do something like this.”

Gonick said other filmmakers have tried to make similar films, in different contexts, but it “has never been done at this scale.”

He said they had the advantage of having a producer who was working on the National Film Board. “We really had the resources to make a huge legacy history of the Canadian queer rights movement type film,” Gonick said.

“We wanted it to be a very intimate and personal discussion,” Gonick says

Gonick said they worked with ArQuives to incorporate archival photos and footage of the queer rights movement in Canada into the documentary. They also had a research consultant from Archive/Counter-Archive based out of York University helping them source materials, according to Gonick.

Additionally, he said they connected with other filmmakers who had been documenting different chapters of this history.

“Nik Sheehan, for instance, made the first film about the gay rights movement in Canada, so we have footage from his work,” Gonick said.

They interviewed various people from different backgrounds who were part of the queer rights movement for the documentary. 

“We wanted the film to feel like … you are talking to people whose shoulders you might be standing on — the elders that came before you,” he said. “We wanted it to be a very intimate and personal discussion where somebody tells you about the milestones that they were involved in and how they helped push the needle forward on queer rights in Canada.”

“When you know your own history, you’re on firmer ground,” Gonick says

The film also took a particular focus on different communities within the larger queer community. It highlighted Black queer folks, Asian queer people, and Two-Spirit individuals, as well as others. 

“I think that people of colour have always been a big part of the history and sometimes in other tellings of the history maybe that hasn’t been fully integrated. But it was important to us to show that there’s always been a certain amount of diversity,” he said.

Gonick also spoke to the importance of folks knowing this history today. He said that some may still challenge those rights, depending on how politics may shift. Knowing what it took to win them in the past is important, Gonick said.

“It took the whole routine of going into the streets to fight for your rights, it’s just something that should be taught, carried, passed on from generation to generation.”

“When you know your own history, you’re on firmer ground, you have a foundation,” he said.

“There’s something very sweet about the new generation continually feeling like they are the first ones to throw the brick, and that’s great. I like that moxie and I like that verve,” Gonick said. “But alongside that, it’s always nice to know what previous generations did to give you the rights that you have.”

You can buy tickets to the Rainbow Visions Film Festival online.