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You are writing a tragicomic novel about provincial censors in a country somewhere in the Americas. A long-suffering bookstore, which has had many of its titles seized and banned over 20 years, fights back, taking its case to the highest court in the realm, and winning a modest victory. Now a documentary film is about to debut about the bookstore's travails. For maximal tragi-comedic effect, what should you have the provincial censors do?

Try to block the film's premiere, of course.

As if in fiction­ and as if in Pinochet's Chile or Castro's Cuba­ that's exactly what happened in August in Vancouver, Canada.

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Just as the 14th annual Vancouver Queer Film & Video Festival was preparing to debut Little Sister v. Big Brother, a documentary about the Vancouver gay and lesbian bookstore Little Sister's fight with Canada Customs, the festival received a letter from the provincial Film Classification Office (FCO), located aptly enough in Victoria. The censors declared they believed that the license of the Capital Six Theater did not allow it to show films of that type. An inspector from the Attorney General's office visited the theater to bring the message home. Should it screen the documentary as planned, it could expect a hefty fine.

"It seems far from coincidental," Janine Fuller, manager of Little Sister's, tells The Guide. Even those steeped in the continuing saga of Canadian censorship thought such official flat-footedness improbable: when Fuller called the documentary's director Aerlyn Weissman to warn her about the attempt to stop the showing, Fuller says Weissman thought she was joking.

While Little Sister's beef has been mostly with Canada Customs, which bars many imported gay titles at the border, the store also has a pending court case against the provincial Film Classification Office over the high fees it demands for rating any video the store wants to rent or sell­ not so much of a problem when you can amortize the fee over the sale of thousands of copies, but a huge impediment when the title is, say, Nude Lesbian Folkdancing.

Backing down under pressure

But British Columbia's attempt to stop the film showing of Little Sisters v. Big Brother, so novelistcally perfect, became instant news and sparked a community outcry. The censors backed down, and the documentary got screened as scheduled. But provincial authorities were still demanding that the festival turn over 11 additional films for classification. The festival was preparing to comply, when on August 9th, the continuing outcry made provincial censors ate crow.

"Because the Queer Film and Video Festival exists to celebrate the media arts as a powerful tool of communication and cooperation among diverse communities," wrote Stephen Pelton, Deputy Director of Film Classification, coopting the language of the oppressed, "FCO is pleased to grant the Out on Screen society exemption from classification requirements."

But the exemption was not the FCO's to grant. Like other British Columbia film festivals, the Queer Film and Video festival organizes itself as a private society, in which people buy "memberships." Because the festival's offerings in effect are "private screenings," they are exempt from the classification law. The FCO knows this­ it has never demanded that other major Vancouver festivals receive prior approval for their films.

"We have stood up the schoolyard bully and he's finally done his homework and backed off," says festival director Drew Dennis. "We are a queer festival showing queer images our membership expects. Requiring us to jump through all these hoops at the last minute raises grave concerns for our members." The festival says it is considering its legal options, including filing a claim that it was victim of discrimination based on sexual orientation.

But the film festival can't plant itself on too grand a free-speech pedestal. Little Sisters v. Big Brother would be a perfect civic lessons for students about the limits of free expression, Canada-style. But they couldn't see it. The queer film festival bans persons under 18 from its screenings.