Welcome back to our queer film retrospective, “A Gay Old Time.” In this week’s column, as the New Year brings us right until the middle of winter, let’s revisit 1965’s seasonally appropriate gay indie, Winter Kept Us Warm.Happy 2025!
To start the year off with the right intentions, this week we’ll take a look at an underrated, under-seen movie from across the northern border that—even though it’s never really gotten its due diligence—occupies a niche space in the queer film canon.
It’s a film with a production and a legacy that perfectly reflect the scrappiness, ingenuity, and creative spirit that has characterized our community.As we’ve discussed in this column for almost two years now, making a queer movie has never been an easy task.Subscribe to our newsletter for your front-row seat to all things entertainment with a sprinkle of everything else queer.Particularly in the early and middle decades of the last century, a myriad of obstacles would prevent our stories from being told, both within the Hollywood system and the broader culture: strict moral codes that stopped any “controversial” characters or plotlines from being portrayed, narrative conventions that limited the kind of lives and stories that could be explored, and a heavily religious and homophobic society that wasn’t ready to welcome us into their movie screens.But if it was hard to get queer movies made (and seen) in the United States—within the giant Hollywood machinery backing the productions—it was much, much more difficult in other countries.
We’ve talked about some international films before, from countries like Cuba, Mexico, and the United Kingdom, and how the individual entertainment industries and cultural landscapes of their nations affected the production and reception.