First Integrated Film with a Short on Sailing (detail), 1963

Painting by Joyce Wieland of the faces of a white woman and a black man coming in for a kiss. Below them is a horizontal sequence of squares, like a film strip, showing a moving sailboat, heads in profile, and speech balloons.

Joyce Wieland, First Integrated Film with a Short on Sailing (detail), 1963, oil on canvas, 66 x 22.7 cm, private collection.

Wieland paradoxically titles this painting a “film,” or rather two films: a feature showing a white woman and a black man melting into a kiss, and a short showing a sailboat, heads in profile, and speech balloons.


In 1963, there were no mainstream films or television programs showing romantic bliss between interracial couples, and likewise no possibility of a narrative climax based on a racially integrated union. Wieland’s “first integrated film” is a fiction that exists only in painted form.

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First Integrated Film with a Short on Sailing - Art Canada