Roger McTair (2)
Roger McTair
Roger McTair is a Trinidadian-Canadian writer and filmmaker (b. Trinidad and Tobago in 1944), whose body of work has been fundamental to the development of Black Canadian arts and culture. McTair studied English Literature and Film at York University in Toronto and worked as an English professor at Seneca College for 18 years. He has published several collections of poetry and short fiction that explore themes of identity, culture, history and belonging in the Caribbean and Canadian contexts. McTair is credited as director of Some Black Women (1975), now considered the first film ever made by a Black Canadian about the perspectives of the Black community in Canada. It was produced by another Black-Canadian pioneer filmmaker, Claire Prieto (also born in Trinidad and Tobago), with whom McTair collaborated on two more films: Different Timbres (1980) and Home to Buxton (1987, co-directed by Prieto). McTair also directed Children Are Not the Problem: An Anti-Racist Childcare Strategies Film (1991) and Jennifer Hodge: The Glory and the Pain (1992), as well as two NFB films, Home Feeling: Struggle for a Community (1983) and Journey to Justice (2000), which focus on the experiences and struggles of Black Canadians and other marginalized groups in Canada.
Photo provided by Ian Kamau.
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Home Feeling: Struggle for a CommunityJennifer Hodge & Roger McTair 1983 57 minThis feature documentary takes us to the heart of the Jane-Finch "Corridor" in the early 1980s. Covering six square blocks in Toronto's North York, the area readily evokes images of vandalism, high-density subsidized housing, racial tension, despair and crime. By focusing on the lives of several of the residents, many of them black or members of other visible minorities, the film provides a powerful view of a community that, contrary to its popular image, is working towards a more positive future. -
Journey to JusticeRoger McTair 2000 47 minThis documentary pays tribute to a group of Canadians who took racism to court. They are Canada's unsung heroes in the fight for Black civil rights. Focusing on the 1930s to the 1950s, this film documents the struggle of 6 people who refused to accept inequality. Featured here, among others, are Viola Desmond, a woman who insisted on keeping her seat at the Roseland movie theatre in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia in 1946 rather than moving to the section normally reserved for the city's Black population, and Fred Christie, who took his case to the Supreme Court after being denied service at a Montreal tavern in 1936. These brave pioneers helped secure justice for all Canadians. Their stories deserve to be told.
