Seeking Secter

David Secter (left) and Joel Secter in The Best of Secter & The Rest of Secter. Courtesy Gwendolyn Pictures.

Looking for fun one night in Winnipeg in the early ’90s, Joel Secter came across an American sex comedy, Feelin’ Up, while perusing his local video store. Joel rented the movie, arrived home and popped it into his VCR. But when the tape rolled, he was soon pressing the pause button to re-read the name of its credited director. Joel thought he must be seeing things. Feelin’ Up had been made by his uncle, David Secter, in 1976.

“Uncle David had been involved in various projects, but I knew nothing of his time as a filmmaker years ago,” Joel says now. The younger Secter then began learning more about the bohemian, counter-cultural lifestyle David had lived, making movies, living in a commune in New York City. Joel also came to understand David’s legendary spot in Canadian film history. His path of discovery has culminated in a poignant ode to his uncle’s crazy life, The Best of Secter & The Rest of Secter. The documentary screens this week as part of Inside Out, Toronto’s annual lesbian and gay film and video festival.

Fans of Canadian independent cinema, of course, will know that David Secter holds a singular spot in the evolution of our national culture, a moment that marks its 40th anniversary this year. It was in 1965 that the Winnipeg upstart, then a 22-year-old undergraduate student at the University of Toronto, set out to make an independent feature film. If Orson Welles had managed Citizen Kane at such a young age, David surmised, why shouldn’t he attempt a feature of his own?

David wrote a script based on his own experiences on campus, where he fell in love with a dorm mate. Though he carefully hid the basic premise of Winter Kept Us Warm (the title, perhaps the quintessential one for a Canadian feature film, was lifted from T.S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land), its plot is clear: this is a film about two young men who are in love with each other.

Back then, English Canada didn’t have a feature film industry. Aside from the notable exception of Larry Kent, the Vancouver-based independent filmmaker, it really was a wilderness out there. David was forced to make do. Using the university as his setting, he cast eager young actor wannabes in the key roles (that’s Janet Amos as a girlfriend who comes between the two men) and forged ahead with the shoot while neglecting his studies. Some university bureaucrats raised concerns about the intimate relationship between the film’s central male characters, but David managed to complete his film under their radar.

From left: Joy Tepperman, John Labow, Henry Tarvainen in Winter Kept Us Warm (1965). Courtesy Joel Secter.

The resulting Winter Kept Us Warm proved a hit, becoming the first English-language Canadian film to be invited to the Cannes International Film Festival. David found himself in the French coastal town, brushing up against iconic film names like Renoir, Bresson and Welles — he even recalls dining with Sophia Loren, then the head of the festival jury.

But as nephew Joel’s documentary points out, this was simply the first episode in a long, artistic, adventurous life for his uncle. After Winter, David made The Offering (1966), a film about the romance that develops between a Chinese woman and a Canadian man as she tours the country with a dance troupe — one of the first interracial relationships depicted in a homegrown movie.

David, though, found Canada a difficult place to secure funding for his movies. “Back then, there was the NFB and the CBC and that was it,” David, now 62, says on the line from his California home. “I was developing a series with the CBC that would have had gay content in it, which was great. But the opportunity and excitement of a place like New York was calling.”

The Best of Secter & The Rest of Secter follows David as he ventures to Manhattan in 1969, continuing to make films and later moving into the realm of theatre. In particular, the documentary succeeds in capturing the flamboyant lives of that period’s artistic underground: David is seen living in a filmmaking commune that shuns traditional monogamous relationships and advocates experimental drug use. There are shots of a barely clad David Secter wandering about, clearly stoned.

Joel’s documentary doubles as testimony to the powerful bond he shares with his uncle. “David really inspired me to want to get into filmmaking,” the first-time director confirms. “He taught me a great deal. He is this incredible person, and I really wanted people to know about him and his incredible achievements.”

Enhancing the film’s deeply personal tone are home-movie clips that David took when he visited a then-wee Joel’s family in Winnipeg. Both informative and melancholic, Joel’s documentary shows us that David, still filmmaking, now has a rewarding and supportive boyfriend. The film also reveals that David is HIV-positive.

“Obviously, when I learned that my uncle had HIV, I was very upset,” says Joel. “But luckily, he has responded extremely well to the medications and lives an extremely good and healthy life.”

David Secter in 2002. Courtesy Gwendolyn Pictures.

And Uncle David’s take on the documentary that bares his name? “I’m thrilled with it — who wouldn’t be? I’m so proud of my nephew, he’s such a pro and a great kid,” he says.

What Joel found both difficult and surprising was that there would be so little financial support for a movie about one of the nation’s filmmaking pioneers. (David Cronenberg has cited Winter Kept Us Warm as a major influence and one of the main reasons he got into filmmaking.) “Given David’s place in our cinema’s evolution, I thought it would have been a bit easier,” Joel says. “But I know that making movies in Canada has always been difficult. I think it’s very important to pay tribute to these largely forgotten pioneers.”

“This film is long overdue.”

The Best of Secter & The Rest of Secter screens as part of the Inside Out Toronto Lesbian and Gay Film and Video Festival, on Monday, May 23 at 5 p.m. at the Cumberland Cinema. Inside Out runs from May 19-29.

Matthew Hays is a Montreal writer.