An historically significant experimental feature, Passiflora (co-dir. Dagmar Teufel, 1985, 85) almost lost to the archive. On the eve of the great NFB turnaround, this daring graffiti essay on the Pope, Michael Jackson, the Olympic Stadium, and the manipulation of the masses gave a spunky glimmer of hope in a decade of institutional complacency. Named after the anesthetic tropical passion flower, Passiflora deploys animation, “new music,” street theatre and dramatization laid over its observation of the two media stars’ simultaneous visit to their Montreal faithful. It celebrates resistance by a coalition of the disobedient: gays, transpeople, the young, battered women, the “psychiatrized,” and abortion activists and clients.