A Film of Its Time, or Way Ahead of It
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WINTER KEPT US WARM
by Chris Dupuis
McGill-Queen’s Univ. Press
124 pages, $19.95

WHEN the Canadian film Winter Kept Us Warm was released in 1965, no one, including the director and producer David Secter, a 22-year-old English major at the University of Toronto with no prior filmmaking experience, believed it would become Canada’s first successful independent film. But despite its critical success, within a decade the film had been all but forgotten. Chris Dupuis’ important book, the latest volume in McGill-Queen’s Queer Film Classics series, attempts to answer the question: “How does a film so radical in its approach, so lauded upon its release, and so important to the history of queer and Canadian cinema, virtually disappear?”

            The film’s plot is autobiographical, inspired by Secter’s own brief friendship with—and unrequited crush on

Nils Clausson is emeritus professor of English at the University of Regina in Manitoba, Canada.