Director/Producer: Rosemarie Reed

Description:

After a decade of attempts to reform British law, a new bill in Parliament to expunge the records of many men convicted under the 1885 law that criminalized male homosexual acts as “gross indecency,” was passed. A wave of post-WWII prosecutions caught thousands, including the brilliant World War II computer pioneer and code-breaker Alan Turing. In 1967, a new Sexual Offenses Act partly decriminalized homosexual acts between consenting adults in England and Wales. Full decriminalization was not enacted until 2003, when the 1885 law was finally repealed. But neither of these reforms expunged the criminal records of those convicted under the old law. In 2009, however, then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown issued a posthumous apology to Turing, and in 2013 the Queen pardoned him, posthumously expunging his conviction. In 2017, a new Policing and Crime Act–with an amendment popularly known as Turing’s Law–automatically pardoned all those convicted under the gross indecency legislation who had already died, but left the surviving victims in a legal limbo, with their convictions still standing. But an amendment to the 2022 Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, now law, will widen the range of homosexual offenses eligible for a disregard and pardon.

Biography:

Rosemarie Reed is an award-winning producer who travels the world to film her highly acclaimed documentaries. If she’s not in New York or Berlin, her two home bases, she’s pursuing subjects in Paris, London, Moscow or Sydney. Some of her films document the lives of scientists such as Irène Joliot-Curie and Frederic Joliot Curie and Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn. Others include historical figures and world leaders, such as Mikhail Gorbachev, who have made significant contributions to society and humankind; she has also told the stories of victims of genocide and human rights abuses. Her work bears on the endless search for a better world.

Contact Information:

e: rosemariereed@filmsforthought.com 
w: filmsforthought.com