Building Bridges: Coalitional Formations in BIPOC 2SLGBTQIA+ Canadian Documentary Cinema of the 1990s

Abstract

In this dissertation, I argue that Canadian BIPOC 2SLGBTQIA+ documentarians of the 1990s provided much-needed representations of inclusive cultural formations of different scales, including hybridized identities, relationalities, and socialities. Collectively, these coalitional formations galvanize intersectional, progressive politics that can help us work toward finding liberatory alternatives to extractivist settler capitalism. First, I explore how my deliberately curated corpus speaks to the complexities of individual intersectional identities in the nineties. Each film highlights how, for BIPOC 2SLGBTQIA+ individuals, one’s internal relationship with various aspects of the self animate the complicated intersections of different aspects of personal identity. Individual attachments with multiple cross-cutting identities draw people into community with various overlapping identity groups. My second chapter looks at cultural formations on a meso-scale, imagining how my corpus represents the healing and supportive relationalities that progressive BIPOC 2SLGBTQIA+ Canadians created in the nineties. These interpersonal relationships empower and include minoritarian Canadians. Finally, I turn to macro-level, institutional collectivities and politics. I argue that each film from my corpus either raises an intersectional and decolonial political consciousness or explicitly documents the political and activist coalitions that minoritarian communities formed in the nineties. The films from my corpus collectively celebrate the lived identities, relationalities, and collectivities that unite diversely situated BIPOC 2SLGBTQIA+ people and their allies. By engaging in coalitional politics, we can remake the world by aligning feminist, anti-racist, decolonial, 2SLGBTQIA+-affirming, and working-class movements in solidarity. In this way, documentary films of the 1990s can inform and inspire contemporary progressive identity politics, as we work collectively toward building a society that supports the needs of minoritarian communities.