The studio’s 2017 symposium DIRT: Intersectional Approaches to Messiness opened with a screening of the rarely-screened and controversial National Film Board documentary Passiflora (1985, Canada, 85 min.) on 16mm.

Passiflora is an experimental documentary ostensibly about the time Pope John Paul II and Michael Jackson visited Montreal within a week of each other in 1984. Produced for an unheard of $1 million, the film caught the ire of top NFB brass for its anarchic depiction of the margins of Montreal society. Its depiction of gay men, trans women, civil protest, and frank discussions of divorce, abortion, and feminism were — and still are — considered controversial. But rather than censor the film outright, the NFB chose to not provide English subtitles for the French-language film for its premiere at the Toronto Festival of Festivals (now known as TIFF) in 1986, effectively ensuring that it would rarely be screened.

The film still remains officially unsubtitled and has been all but lost within the archives. In 2008, the film was hacked by Jon Davies, who developed “digital subtitles” to be simultaneously projected over the film. Our screening of Passiflora will feature these unofficial digital English subtitles.