Last month we had the honour of honouring one of Canada’s most dedicated political filmmakers – John Greyson. On February 28th John traveled from Toronto to Montreal to speak at a special night Cinema Politica organized to showcase his work. SEX, SONG AND SEGREGATION was a program of several shorts and excerpts taken from decades of John’s work on Aids, queer rights, apartheid and Palestine. As our write-up put it:

Toronto’s prizewinning filmmaker in person to present nine shorts and excerpts, bringing together for the first time South Africa and Israeli apartheid, sodomy and safer sex, penguins and protests, megaphone music and Elton John, in an explosively political combination.

The event was attended by over 500 people and at the end of the night we gave John the first ever Cinema Politica “Alanis Obomsawin Award for Commitment to Community and Resistance.” Alanis was there to give John a gift of a box set of her films (which focus on the colonization and resistance of Canada’s First Nations communities). They posed with me (Svetla was out of town) for the photo above (taken by Thanh Pham).

You can check out some of John’s videos online here.

• Alanis Obomsawin
• Cinema Politica
• John Greyson