The Daily Bulletin Archive

Please join us for This Is Gay Propaganda: LGBT Rights & the War in Ukraine, the next film in our Beyond Boundaries: Dare to Be Diverse screening and discussion series, on Thursday, April 5, at 7:00 p.m. in the Burchfield Penney Art Center. Filmmker Marusya Bociurkiw will be in attendance.

Since 2013, a Gay Propaganda Law has been in force in Russian-dominated Eastern Ukraine and Crimea. AIDS organizations have been defunded. LGBT parents live in fear of having their children seized by authorities, and LGBT activists have had to flee their homes.

This Is Gay Propaganda: LGBT Rights & the War in Ukraine follows several LGBT people and feminists who, after horrific experiences at the hands of Kremlin-funded militias, have fled Eastern Ukraine for the relative safety of a shelter in Kyiv. It also investigates the rise of hate crimes and nationalist fervor in central Ukraine, and the creative resistance of the LGBT activists as they organize for their first Pride Day since the 2013 Euromaidan revolution.

Marusya Bociurkiw is the daughter of Ukrainian immigrants and an associate professor at Ryerson University. She has directed 10 films and written six books and over 75 scholarly, popular, and arts-based articles. Her books have won or been shortlisted for several awards including the Kobzar Literary Award, the Lambda Literary Award, and the Independent Publisher Book Award. She is the director of the Studio for Media Activism and Critical Thought at Ryerson, and the recipient of this year's university-wide Knowledge Mobilization and Engagement Award. In her teaching, writing, and filmmaking, she works at the intersection of art, social justice, collaboration, identity, and friendship.

Please visit the event Facebook page or the film's website for more information.

This event is co-sponsored by the Women and Gender Studies Interdisciplianry Unit and the Faculty-Student Association Founders Fund. 

Beyond Boundaries: Dare to Be Diverse is sponsored by the Buffalo State Equity and Campus Diversity Office, the Communication Department, and the Burchfield Penney Art Center.

All films are free and open to the public.