Cured
View the riveting trailer here
USA 2020. Patrick Sammon, Bennett Singer
80 min
Streaming February 11 (Thursday) through February 18 (Thursday)
Live Webinar Q&A February 17- 7:00pm
“Riveting … Deserves its place alongside other seminal documentaries such as How to Survive a Plague, The Celluloid Closet, Before Stonewall, and The Times of Harvey Milk.”
James Kleinmann, The Queer Review
This provocative documentary highlights a previously underappreciated activist campaign in the struggle to achieve normality for the LGBTQ community. For years, the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (or DSM) listed homosexuality as a mental illness. The personal and professional implications for homosexuals could be devastating: the loss of family and friends or one’s job; the risk of coercive interventions such as aversion therapy or forced heterosexual marriage. In 1973, the APA’s Board of Directors finally voted to remove homosexuality from the DSM. All those “suffering” from homosexuality were thereby “cured” — hence the title of this important film. Five years in the making, and incorporating a trove of newly unearthed archival material, Cured sheds new light on a pivotal victory that was far from inevitable, while situating the APA story within the larger context of the modern movement for LGBTQ equality.
The film will be available to stream February 11 – 18.
Pre-register for your free virtual ticket
Free Live Q&A
February 17 (Wednesday) 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm PST
Join The Cinematheque for a live Zoom Q&A with Cured co-director Bennett Singer and film subject Dr. Richard Pillard, who will be joined by Dr. Chris Booth and Dr. Albina Veltman. Moderated by Dr. Harry Karlinsky, Clinical Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia.
Join the Zoom here at 7:00 pm PST on February 17.
Speaker Bios
Bennett Singer, the co-director of Cured, has been making social-issue documentaries for more than twenty years. His work includes Brother Outsider, an award-winning portrait of the gay civil rights activist Bayard Rustin.
Dr. Richard Pillard is a psychiatrist based in Boston. He was the first openly gay psychiatrist in the U.S., and an adviser on the effort to get the APA to change the DSM classification of homosexuality.
Dr. Chris Booth is a Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist and a Clinical Instructor with UBC Department of Psychiatry. His private practice focuses on gender-questioning and transgender youths and their families.
Dr. Albina Veltman is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at McMaster University. Her clinical work focuses on traditionally marginalized populations, including those who identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community.
Co-sponsored by Western Canada District Branch, American Psychiatric Association, and UBC Community Engagement.

Kay Lahusen joined other protesters on a picket line in front of Philadelphia’s Independence Hall on July 4, 1969. This protest marked the fifth “Annual Reminder,” a march held yearly on July 4 to remind Americans that LGBTQ citizens were denied basic civil rights. Photo by Nancy Tucker, courtesy Lesbian Herstory Archives