The film “A Year of Landmark Events” came about because I had been invited to speak at an LGBT event in Brighton and couldn’t make it. However, the DVD that I produced then became a useful educational tool at the time.
It’s worth remembering that there was no You Tube or Vimeo in those days, so the only way I could distribute the film was by the laborious process of making DVD copies on my computer and sending them out by post. In the end I distributed around 150 copies in that way.
The experience of making this resource also shaped the way that I went on to use audio and video media. I could see how media like these could be so effective, and yet I also judged in those days that the world wasn’t quite ready for mass video .. which is why I then moved into producing Podcasts. In early 2005 I purchased a portable digital recorder and talked Tracy Dean (Press for Change's web mistress) into building a Podcast platform to distribute the material. The PFC AV Page remained the home for everything I produced until I moved on from PFC in November 2007.
The film was made barely three months after the Gender Recognition Act had been passed by Parliament, and more than six months before the Gender Recognition Panel would begin processing applications for legal recognition.
After the GRA - October 2004 from Plain Sense Ltd on Vimeo.
It was a time when we were still reflecting on what had just taken place, but also starting to define what needed to happen next, so it’s interesting to look at this again five years on. Sadly the priorities I identified five years ago remain the major challenges for social change today, although undoubtable progress has been made in each area.
