March for Dignity at the Human Rights Watch Canada Film Festival

REVIEW by Drew Rowsome

25 May 2022 -

While we fortunate gays in the west see Pride mainly as a party, in Tbilisi, Georgia, Pride is inextricably mired in politics. The first attempt at a Pride march in Georgia, a country with a population roughly equivalent to the GTA, ended in extreme violence courtesy of counter protesters. The footage in March for Dignity is horrifying, as the marchers try to escape a mob, eventually being trapped in a school bus showered with rocks and rocked off its wheels. Adding insult to injury, the church and government (who work in unison) then declared May 17, the Georgian date for Pride, to be a new religious holiday: Family Day. Severely daunted but not defeated, a small group of Georgians began, in 2019, to plan a Pride march. March for Dignity is a documentation of their travails and eventual triumphant, if tiny, success. 

As march after march gets postponed or cancelled, March for Dignity begins to take on the quality of a action thriller. The government allows a permit, a permit is cancelled. A location is kept secret but still manages to be leaked to the church and counter protesters. Death threats arrive on private phones. An anti-Russia protest, resulting in a hail of rubber bullets and clouds of tear gas, derails a date. Over and over the brave organizers find themselves in nerve-wracking physical danger. Through it all they try to remain calm and stalwart but the stress starts to show and they begin to snap at each other and disagree. One of the members, who gives several calm and precise interviews attempting to explain Georgian politics and the deep-rooted homophobia, finally gets to march. It is awe-inspiring to hear him lean into the bullhorn and finally express his anger and frustration.

Every thriller needs a villain and March for Dignity is packed with evil. The filmmakers wisely don't offer commentary or contradiction, they just let the men, and they are all white men, talk. The venom they spew is a bizarre combination of frightened masculinity and the tired equation of homosexuality with pedophilia. The leader of the Society for the Defense of Children's Rights tells of children forced to cross dress and march in Pride parades, "If you can see in the eyes of the children, they are dying." Pride is decried as, in what in a better world would make a great official slogan, an "artificial so-called celebration of shamelessness and lewdness." Over and over it is stated that Georgians have no problems with gays as long as they stay hidden and invisible. As long as they don't complain about not having basic human rights. The angriest of the men, the one calling for death to the gays, are, unsurprisingly, the ones who also trigger one's gaydar, even through the filter of film. By contrast the gay activists are all unassuming and their passion is intellectual and not at all sexual.

That becomes the crux of March for Dignity's politics. Georgia is, at the time of filming, split between wanting to join the European Union which would require it to enshrine human rights, specifically LGBTQ rights. And despite a deep-seated hatred for years of being under Russia's boots, that is a step too far for many. It is a conflict between western and Russian values with LGBT rights as a flash point. It is here that March for Dignity cries out for a sequel. Much has happened since May of 2019. How did covid, which scuttled most Pride celebrations, affect Georgia's progress? At one point Ukraine is held up as a country that knows how to keep its gays in their place. How has the Russian invasion changed or exacerbated that? And I couldn't help but fear for the fate of the activists that March for Dignity has given a voice. They have earned my respect and admiration not only for their gumption but for their fabulous queer creativity. Their hard-earned small victory is cathartic but, no matter how indomitable their spirit, feels fragile.