Directed by Harry Sutherland • 1978 • Canada • 19’

October 22nd, 1977. Truxx, a popular gay bar on Montreal’s Stanley Street, was raided by swarms of police officers with ballistic vests and machine guns. That night, 144 people present were arrested (most on the false charge of being “found-ins in a bawdy-house”), tossed into claustrophobic jail cells, invasively tested for VD, and charged the following day. This act of repression made an indelible mark on Montreal’s gay community, prompting a vast, collective response, sit-down protests in the downtown area, and furious media outcry. The explosion of civil protest radicalized a new generation of Montrealers into the gay liberation movement.

Released in the aftermath, Harry Sutherland’s short documentary TRUXX is a memorialization of this injustice, an indictment of a heteronormative system that uses legislative power to incarcerate and erase queerness, and a fearless call-to-action. Told through first-hand accounts of Truxx victims, Sutherland’s film argues for the sanctity of queer spaces outside the violence of heteronormativity. The film ends with a procession of picketers, marching and chanting, “Gay! Gay, dans la rue!” — a rallying cry to organize, mobilize, and de-isolate a disenfranchised queer population.

Our website hosts the only version of TRUXX available: an English-dubbed digitization of its video-to-16mm transfer. In acknowledgement of the Truxx raid’s 47th anniversary, this crucial document of Montreal history will be available to stream for free over the next three days.

All proceeds generated from the streaming of this video are split between the artists/rights holder and Cinema Politica. To find out more visit cinemapolitica.org.