Pride Month is a celebration and a remembrance of LGBTQ2+ accomplishments. It’s also a reflection on how much further to go before the world recognizes that ‘love is love.  To supplement the college’s  Pride Week Activities, including self-guided courses, the library has several resources depending on the format or looking at one aspect of the community.

Start Here

One place to start is the Gender & Sexual Diversity section of the Intercultural Competency & Diversity Guide for resources about the Transgender community or coming out in general. Place a request for a title or head to the website section for various websites devoted to organizations like Winnipeg’s own Rainbow Resource Centre or a media arts collective known as Love Intersections bringing an intersectional lens to the community.

Streaming Videos

A film can provide an intimate look into the lives of individuals within the community with titles looking back on history or looking at present concerns. The National Film Board features many documentaries as part of its LGBTQ2+ channel. Below are three of the many titles making up the channel:

First Stories-Two Spirit 

From the summary:
This short documentary presents the empowering story of Rodney “Geeyo” Poucette’s struggle against prejudice in the Indigenous community as a two spirited person (gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender). Geeyo registers as a dancer in the Kamloopa Powwow under the Jingle Dress category (normally reserved for women). Deeply humiliated by a misguided elder, Geeyo is reminded by his grandmother that two spirited people were once respected and honoured for their spiritual gifts. Geeyo eventually makes a triumphant return to the powwow arena, realizing that the only way to change people’s minds is to walk proudly while being true to one’s spirit. 

Reviving the Roost

From the summary:
Filmmaker and bestselling author Vivek Shraya’s ode to a popular Edmonton gay bar that closed in 2007. With pulsating neon-light animation, Reviving the Roost is a story about community complexity and longing, and an elegy to a lost space.

Standing on the Line

From the summary:
TRIGGER WARNING: This film contains the following subject matter: Suicide and self harm.

In both amateur and professional sports, being gay remains taboo. Few dare to come out of the closet for fear of being stigmatized, and for many, the pressure to perform is compounded by a further strain: whether or not to affirm their sexual orientation.

Breaking the code of silence that prevails on the field, on the ice and in the locker room, this film takes a fresh and often moving look at some of our gay and lesbian athletes, who share their experiences with the camera. They’ve set out to overcome prejudice in the hopes of changing things for the athletes of tomorrow.