Nova Scotia·NewWhen filmmaker James MacSwain, 80, died this month at his longtime home in downtown Halifax, he was surrounded by dozens of his closest friends, all of whom were clinking glasses of champagne as they sent him off into the next world.Beloved fixture of Halifax art world created a life on his own termsAndrew Sampson · CBC News · Posted: Sep 21, 2025 5:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 30 minutes agoArtist James MacSwain celebrates a birthday surrounded by friends at his home in Halifax in this still from the film Celestial Queer: The Life, Work and Wonder of James MacSwain. (Eryn Foster and Sue Johnson)When filmmaker James MacSwain, 80, died this month at his longtime home in downtown Halifax, he was surrounded by dozens of his closest friends, all clinking glasses of champagne as they sent him off into the next world.It was a characteristically fabulous way to go out, and one that was in keeping with MacSwain’s unconventional way of living as an artist and human being fiercely committed to his independence in all senses of the word.He was perhaps best known for his eccentric short films, many which involved the use of stop-motion animation. Some of these were autobiographical, like one inspired by his life as a gay man who grew up in small-town Nova Scotia, while others were more fantastical, featuring everything from giant phalluses to dragons to Marilyn Monroe.Born in Amherst in 1945, MacSwain chafed at the rigidity of the community, especially as he came to discover his own sexuality. He came of age before the era of gay liberation, years before the Stonewall Riots, and at a time where being intimate with another man was against the law. In his autobiographical film Amherst, released in 1984, he said this was a period of “puritanical patriarchy” where “paranoia and fear became the basis of a society.” A still from James MacSwain’s 1984 short film Amherst, shot on Super 8 film. (James MacSwain)Being gay, in this world ruled by straight men, was something to be kept a secret.”I absorbed without doing so the notion that my sexuality was a lie and that love was for others,” MacSwain says in his voice-over for the film. But he had a choice: stay and conform or leave and transform.”Amherst is a … victory poem of being able to sidestep that entrance into mainstream society and become the eccentric brilliant genius that I am,” he told filmmakers Eryn Foster and Sue Johnson, with a sly smile, in their 2023 documentary Celestial Queer: The Life, Work, and Wonder of James MacSwain. “I wasn’t going to be normal, I wasn’t going to stay in Amherst and raise a family, and I wasn’t going to be a fit in society as a whole.”After leaving home, he attended nearby Mount Allison University for two years until a professor pushed him to drop out after voicing his disapproval over MacSwain’s paintings of male friends in various stages of undress.He soon moved to downtown Halifax, where he purchased a large home with several friends in the early 1970s for just $30,000.That decision was fortuitous. Living there, which he did for the remainder of his life, gave him the freedom to pursue his dreams without compromise. “Jim was someone who really was anticapitalist. He didn’t want to be part of that system. He wanted to be an artist and make the work he felt was important to make,” says filmmaker Eryn Foster. MacSwain is shown in the backyard of his home in Halifax. Buying the home with friends gave him the financial safety net to pursue his art. (Eryn Foster and Sue Johnson)He soon began his career as a filmmaker. In time he would be closely linked, in both paid and volunteer capacities, with the Centre for Art Tapes, the Atlantic Filmmakers’ Cooperative, and NSCAD University, organizations that each paid tribute to MacSwain online this week. Artist and activist MacSwain wasn’t, however, just an artist. In 1977, he was part of a protest of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in Halifax. The protest stemmed from the station’s refusal to air a public service announcement for the GayLine, a phone service run by the Gay Alliance for Equality that offered counselling, information and referrals to queer people looking for support. Longtime friend Robin Metcalfe, a queer activist and curator in Halifax, says it was the first queer demonstration in Atlantic Canada. “I have pictures of Jim in that demo,” he said. “He was there from the very beginning in an activist role.” In 1977, James MacSwain, centre, was one of around a dozen people who protested the CBC in Halifax for refusing to air a public service announcement for the GayLine. (Robin Metcalfe)As he grew older, he rode the crest of a wave that saw queer people move from the fringes of society and inch ever closer to the mainstream, even as his work always remained closer to the avant-garde. “He was of a generation … who grew up in a world where there were very few representations of gay reality and no positive ones readily available,” said Metcalfe.”We learned how to create a new imaginary world of representation, often using collage, cutting out bits and pieces of existing representations and reorganizing them, putting them in a different context to create something new, and Jim was a … master at that.” Art exhibit, film screenings plannedAs Foster recalled, MacSwain saw himself as a survivor. Having lived through both gay liberation and the devastation of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s and ’90s, a time when he saw many close friends die, he was determined to document everything. His archive is now housed at Dalhousie University.”Beyond his artwork and everything else that he did, he’s left an incredible treasure trove of archives, which tell his story and the story of his communities,” she said.James MacSwain, seen here in an archival photo, kept an exhaustive archive of his work and local queer history. (Celestial Queer: The Life and Wonder of James MacSwain.)In the coming months, screenings of Celestial Queer are planned for NSCAD in Halifax and in MacSwain’s hometown of Amherst.A solo exhibition of his visual artwork, meanwhile, will open near the end of November at Hermes Gallery in Halifax. “I want to make sure that the film continues to get out into the world in various capacities and of course that will just keep him front of mind,” said Foster.
James MacSwain, visionary queer filmmaker and visual artist, dead at 80
