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The Ninth Floor

Year 2015
Runtime 81 mins

In January 1969, several hundred students from Sir George Williams University in Montreal took over a ninth-floor computer lab, and spent the next two weeks fighting to be heard as equal humans. Frustrated by the lack of action from the school’s administration after a professor had been accused of racism, the students peacefully protested for 13 days before they were forced out of the building by a fire and apprehended by the riot police, leading both sides to blame the other for the violence.

Director Mina Shum (DOUBLE HAPPINESS) interviews the people who were there and offers a fresh perspective, almost 50 years after the events. Some of the people arrested that day went on to become Canadian senators and Caribbean Prime Ministers; many came from privileged backgrounds and, as a result, refused to be ignored any longer. A turning point in Canadian race relations, THE NINTH FLOOR documents the causes and results of the biggest student occupation in the country’s history. DISCOVERY AWARD NOMINEE.

Countries

Canada
Director
Mina Shum
Producer
Selwyn Jacob