Winter Kept us Warm

Thursday, September 11, 2025
7:00 PM / Broadway Theatre

Winter Kept us Warm / Canada/ 1965/ Dir: David Sector/ 81 Min

Six decades ago, a tiny film produced at the University of Toronto became an international sensation. David Secter’s Winter Kept Us Warm was the first film from English Canada to screen at Cannes, and one of the country’s earliest works of queer cinema.

Produced while most of the cast and crew were still students, the modest black-and-white drama observes the growing attraction between two young men, extroverted Doug (John Labow) and reserved freshman Peter (Henry Tarvainen).

Initially received as a curiosity, Winter Kept Us Warm now looks like a breakthrough in its treatment of queer characters as fully dimensional human beings. Doug and Peter’s girlfriends — played by future stage legend Janet Amos and author Joy Fielding, then billed as Joy Tepperman — are just as fleshed-out, which is remarkable in its own way.

Cited as an early inspiration by Secter’s classmate David Cronenberg, Winter Kept Us Warm returns to the screen in a new 4K restoration by Canadian International Pictures.