A British movie called “Pride” has won an award at Cannes Film Festival for best film depicting LGBT characters. The movie is about an unlikely alliance between miners threatened by Margret Thatcher’s redundancy plans and Britain’s LGBT community threatened by the PM’s socially conservative agenda.
The film by British director Matthew Warchus depicts the the Miners strike of 1984, and delves into the story of how mining families were supported financially by Britain’s LGBT community. While the National Union of Mineworkers is reluctant to accept help, given their own prejudices, ultimately the two groups unite in the common cause of taking down the Tories.
I’m really looking forward to this movie when it comes out in October. I’m somewhat well acquainted with the doings of Thatcher (whom I have no love lost, let me assure you), because as a middle schooler, I discovered the movie Brassed Off with Ewan McGregor and was heavily influenced into studying the political situation surrounding colliery redundancy and housing estate privatisation. Yes, that’s right, I was political even at 12.
If you haven’t seen it, you really should. Danny’s speech at the end of the movie is particularly compelling as background information to this struggle (note, spoilers, spoilers, spoilers):
As to “Pride,” Bruce LaBruce, a Canadian filmmaker and head of the award jury which selected it as this year’s winner of the unofficial Queer Palm award at Cannes, points out the value in looking back at this time in Britain’s history as it can have lessons to teach us today.
“Pride” is an important and relevant story to tell today given the climate of intolerance and violence directed against those among us whose sexuality questions the norms of the dominant culture. The film reminds us that political, sexual or social struggles against reactionary and conservative powers were born from direct activism.
