Sara Morrison vs Belfast Film Festival

[NorthernIrishFeminist]

Employers seem to be slow learners when it comes to women's rights! There’s another employment tribunal case being brought by a woman who attended and took the microphone at a Let Women Speak event in Belfast last year and has been treated very badly by her employer Belfast Film Festival as a result.

Looks like we’re going to have to keep gardening until they get the message.

disclaimer. I don’t know Sara and have no connection to BFF I’m just a woman who likes donating to causes that make a difference

Thank you @MyrtleLion for all the C&P, it is appreciated.

I so wish we had the remote viewing on this one, it sounds like a doozy.

"stand by your trans, and tell the world you're batshit..." 🎤

At least if they have to sell the bigly telly to pay for Sara's compensation MD won't have to scratch around to find a use for it to justify the purchase.

Having read the "hey, shall we put on some films for you while you sit on beanbags? What films do you fancy?" email, I am wondering how difficult a job she has. If that's a big important event for them* and basically they are just sticking some fairly mainstream films on the telly, and not even planning the programme themself...is that a lot of work? I feel like we had that at school when it was end of term. They haven't even managed to put an advert in the programme because they missed the deadline, so that saved them a job.

*I am giving benefit of doubt that there might have been an actual intent at some point to put this event on.

Would there be some work involved I am missing - maybe licence applications to screen the film, or getting consent and paying the production company of each film?

Would there be some work involved I am missing - maybe licence applications to screen the film, or getting consent and paying the production company of each film?

Funny you should mention that because my DH literally asked whether there were emails from the specialist company who would be paid to erect the screen as £2,000 implies a professional team is required; emails from Belfast Pride to agree it would be part of the official Pride events; and whether a licence would be required to erect a screen in a public place.

Because we might expect to see those emails if the event had been planned since February 2023. Absence of these routine emails is like the dog that didn't bark in The Hound ofnthe Baskervilles.

Instead of lapel grabbing, what NC said was that yes it is indeed very important. And immediately moved on.

Those more familiar with NC would have been quaking in their boots.

Genuinely hard to know.

She does not seem competent. She’s lying for sure. But also doddery to the point of incompetence.

Sara knew her answers right away around her legal team verifying was there a 2022 Pride event, was there any documentary evidence for Y. She was sharp and clearly kept things organized / in check. At times it seems Michelle was losing her mind (as well as being a lying conniving aggressive, combative cheeky eedjit)

She said she’s worked there for 30 years. It has one full time employee aside from her and two part time employees. Half money comes from local Council, half from Screen NI (which is probably gvt funded).

So she has no skills to grow the organisation, can’t make her BIG ERECT VERY EXPENSIVE DONT YOU KNOW SCREEN make a profit, no governance, can’t run the org properly, hasn’t updated contracts in 12 years minimum, can’t keep basic facts straight, lost Sara’s laptop for near a year because it was getting fixed, only has three sets of office keys but really needed Sara’s back (rather than buying a new set), she definitely looks up to / panders to the board.

She wants to be in the Arts and be credible but she’ll never be in Mark Cousins cool crew. She is a stodgy stoodge for them. She prances around taking pics of her in a t-shirt standing by her trans. Except not one stands with her. No trans group stand with her. No family.

She has a few board members attending but no one in support. The board appears to be “dirty by association” - the whole nasty business is beneath them. They’d rather be elsewhere. Mark clearly resents being dragged into this by MD.

A couple of people have misgendered the judge. She is a woman. As is one of the panel members.

The judge doesn't seem fond of NC's style, and is trying to keep the line of questioning v narrow (a significant member of the observers has a theory that she's trying to avoid getting tangled up in the trans thing, and wants to keep strictly to simple employment law). However, she also appears less than delighted with MD.

It's worth a reminder, I think, that the EA - and therefore FWS -doesn’t apply over here. But NI has other more specific laws on political discrimination.

Assorted thoughts from this morning:

SD is not as grumpy as he appeared to me yesterday. That's his 'thinking and typing' face. He's probably not a bad poker player.

SM's solicitor is probably not such a good poker player. He didn't laugh at the 'why did you give us the 37-page instruction book?' section of questioning, but there was a face.

For those who lost track of the U-turns, MC's problem with the speech was:

• That he was frightened by the phrase 'I'm standing up for women'. [Because Mussolini]
• It was all fine [Mussolini who?] apart from listing their partner organisations.
• There was no problem with the content; only that she said it in the wrong context. She would have been 'ill advised' to say anything at all as part of LWS. [but there's no guilt by association]

He was not pleased at the suggestion he was part of the liberal elite, and said he'd never encountered the phrase 'luxury beliefs'.

His understanding of 'trans inclusive feminism' was that it includes TW. But he was then stumped by the suggestion that this meant it excludes TM.

When talking about how blindsided he was by yesterday's suggestion that he wanted SM removed from the organisation, he repeated twice that the idea was jawdropping. And then gave an extended demonstration of his jaw being dropped.

MC was asked why, having sent the 24 June email about the situation, he then sent a much more formal one 'raising concerns' on 5 July - as if he'd not raised them already. Response seemed oddly worded, to me: 'It was the first time this subject had touched my life.' First time he'd 'heard it from Sara's mouth directly'. And he 'didn't think it was good that SM said to a board member that her boss [his emphasis] was mirepresenting a situation'.

@NoBinturongsHereMate The EQA does not apply but FWS does. Because it is an SC ruling. The SC prevails over all local and delegated laws and is the deciding authority.

And from the afternoon.

As well as the morning's extra 145 pages of screen set up instructions and plans for a totally different event from the one asked for, there was another distribution of additional papers after lunch. This was proof of the many, many women’s organisations BFF works with (and consisted of a programme from 2013, listing 1 org).

The justification for including the instruction book in the disclosures included a repetition of the information that It's Very Expensive.

They had to have the Pride event, because otherwise they would have gone a whole season without using the Very Expensive screen. Except they wouldn't have, because it had only just finished being used for Docs Ireland.

The bit about 'This is a plan for a different event on a different site, but we definitely have a plan I've not found for a different event on the same site, and that's the same thing as having a plan for the actual event' segment was genuinely hilarious. Especially coming after the 'But how was I supposed to know you wouldn't want the instruction book?' part.

Yesterday and today MD was at great pains to point out Sara not having done her job (setting up 2022 event, creating actual plan for the 2023 one, not sending email etc). This seems to be a key part of her defence strategy - it wasn't the trans thing, it was standard employment stuff.

The 'who was on holiday?' list now also includes the person at the council who they would have submitted the plan to if they hadn't cancelled the event before writing a plan.

MD was asked about sending That Email reminding all the LGBT+ list about Sara's existence, contrary to MC's expressed desire to keep the 2 sides apart. This got a rather sharp 'He's not her boss. I'm her boss.' from MD.

The only thing anyone can remember about the meeting nobody can remember is what they definitely didn't discuss.

The door squeak has been fixed, so my 3-in-1 oil wasn't needed. But I could have done with a hip flask or some paracetamol.

I want to come back to what Michelle said about the Pride on the Big Screen thing so I can count the lies:

NC I have a few questions of the Pride on Big Screen event - you say you were planning this since Feb 2023.
MD yes
NC yet there is no doc trace of this in the bundle of any planning of this event prior to 3 July
MD there are minutes from support
and supervision meetings 🔥 and in SM's end of year appraisal 🔥

[Liar liar pants on fire - Sara said not and no evidence produced]
……

NC but I was specifically asking you if there was any documentary trace before 3 July 2023 about Pride on the Big Screen where would we find it?
MD a number of documents before the pandemic we had screenings at Pride and in 2022 we re-initiated 🔥 and SM was part of the delivery of that

[Sara provided evidence of 22 brochure showing they rented out a room to a third party group who showed a film - they’d hired the room and Sara chased the invoice]

and this was going to be the second of those.
NC so you say somewhere in the possession of R there will be docs which specifically mention the use of the big screen in Pride on the Big Screen.
MD yes 🔥
NC you say in par 18 of your WS a screening had been discussed for Belfast Pride - that sounds like maybe one day you'd do this
MD "no we had a specific plan to do something at Pride 🔥 and this was going to be the second year of it 🔥
NC what happened at Pride 2022
MD screenings at a [local] cinema
NC and when did that happen
MD around Pride
NC and the 2022 Pride brochure is still online?
MD I don't think we did it in time to make the brochure 🔥 [it made the brochure because it wasn’t your event]
NC yet you were planing the 2023 Pride event from Feb?
MD yes 🔥
NC in 2022 the Belfast Rainbow project asked to hire a room
MD no that's not it 🔥 [pride brochure online shows it to be true]
NC so what happened in 2022
MD I'll have to go and check this
NC you're making this up, aren't you
MD [laughs] No! I actually find that quite rude

NC so you met with Pedro Donald the sponsor of Pride on the Big Screen and he was worried he might get boycotted because of SM's association with an anti-trans event - so he's saying on 5 May he'll be worried his bar will be boycotted
MD yes
NC you didn't do anything about those concerns
MD she told me she'd not do it again
NC was that enough then
MD I hadn't had a chance yet to sort it out
NC but you did report it back to the co-chairs
……

NC you don't mention the Pride on the Big Screen Event in that message to the co-chairs, do you?
In your WS you mention the Pride in the Big Screen event, but not at the time
MD I was concerned we were going to lose a sponsor 🔥 [no sponsorship agreement or written agreement or email a confirmation emailwas produced]

NC if what you say is true that he raised a concern re the PBS event, why you didn't report this back to the co-chairs
NC but he's a sponsor, he's an owner of the pub, and it was where the event was going to take place, so if he wasn't happy, the event wasn't going to happen, was it

MD he sponsored the power supply - the event was going to take place at the Belfast Stories site - he didn't say it wouldn't happen.
NC you don't tell them this is threatening BPS
MD I didn't feel at that point it was a threat to the event 🔥 [there was no sponsorship agreement- the event didn’t exist]
NC presumably it would be quite an important event in your calendar - a big deal
MD it was an event [🔥 oh no it wasn’t]

NC there'd be a lot of work involved - SM would do [grafix] for it, you'd have to plan to get the screen up, you'd need to advertise it

MD we'd need to put an advert in the brochure if we were on time, use our own channels [🔥 9 June was date for Pride brochure submission - date had passed when generic email was sent out saying what do you think about hangover beanbag erect screen etc]

NC I'm trying to suggest there's quite a bit of work to do - so can you be specific about what plans had already been formulated by end June
MD we had applied for a licence to the council, we had an event delivery plan [🔥 - this was Docs Ireland event in June and had no relation to Pride on Big Screen]

NC written down somewhere?
MD we did a similar event at the same site, so we had it all done, we just needed a name change... [🔥 if name change it still wasn’t allocated to a team member or carried out as no document on name change or plan written down]

J asks to clarify the event
MD it was the Docs Ireland event in June - so it was a good use of resources...

sorry I'm finding it really distracting you keep looking behind you and nodding [MD is addressing Simon Chambers] - they both are [she appears to be addressing Charlotte Elves]

So by my very imprecise count Michelle lied 16 times in yesterday about Pride on the Big Screen Event. She lied about where evidence could be found, lied about having a sponsor for an event that didn’t yet exist and she still holds the lie when it is evidenced from her 3 July email nothing had been done.

There was no written evidence produced and some lies were refuted shortly after with evidence.

The nodding point is because every time MD lied Sara shook her head to tell the team that’s not true. Sara had her ducks in a row to use a Mumsnet phrase.

That's where it all gets confusing, because while SC rulings apply this one is a ruling on an Act that doesn't apply - so nobody¹ seems quite sure what to do with it. Which is part of the basis of the 'judge just wants to stay out of it' theory.

¹ I daresay legal bods have a view, and some of them may even agree on a view, but certainly to general observers and those Stormont members who've ventured an opinion it all feels a bit limbo-ish.

It’s actually free to erect the screen. You’re actually paying the £2000 to hire another screen alluring enough to arouse the VERY BIG EXPENSIVE SCREEN.

🎤Sometimes it's hard to be a woman
Giving all your love to just the trans
You'll have bad times, and they’ll have good times
Creating events that you don't understand

But if you love them, you'll forgive them
Even though sex is binary is hard to understand
And if you love them, oh, be PRIDE of them,
'Cause after all, he's just a trans

Stand by your trans
Give them a big screen to cling to
And beanbags to come to
When nights are cold and lonely

Stand by your trans
And show the world you love him
Through PBS events you haven’t planned
Stand by your trans” 🎤

Film festival staff need to stay 'squeaky clean', board member tells tribunal - BBC News

I love this so much. You’ve had me laughing so much today.

How you keep up all your work for these boards I do not know. I haven’t even caught up with Darlington submissions after watching the whole darn thing!

Im in awe @MyrtleLion

I think this is why everyone seems to want to get a ruling from the High Court on what it all means.

Since the EA 2010 is the successor to the SDA 1975, from which the Sex Discrimination (NI) Order 1976 derives, I think it's extremely unlikely that any judge would rule that FWS doesn't apply to the various bits of NI equality legislation. But everyone seems to want to kick the can down the road until the High Court tells them what to do.

So yeah, it's a tricky old situation for the tribunal to find itself in.

This case is more about free speech and discrimination on the basis of that free speech.

One point Sean Doherty kept making is - my clients agree that your client is entitled to her beliefs - ‘so this isn’t about what Sara said’.

His case is all that happened is Sara had a speech, Michelle was kind and caring, Sara promised not to do it again. But Sara started refusing to do her job - and since their ‘treasured partner organisations’ raised some complaints they wanted to have an investigation. A wee tiny kind investigation that’s all. Except Sara raised a grievance and now here we are.

Summary:
Sara shared a platform with extremists
We had to investigate
She went off sick and resigned

So the Judge is saying - no grandstanding as BFF have said that Sara is entitled to her sex realist beliefs. It’s not a political case.

Hence FWS being less central to this case. There are no penises in changing rooms. But there is a very big expensive screen with an 37 page erection strategy. Even the Judge has a copy.

It was clearly a cooked up event to create a justifiable means for getting rid of SM because no sensible film festival wanting to partner with organisations for an event at Pride would do it last minute for a number of reasons.

It is phenomenally difficult to get consensus on film choices by various groups - no one programmes like that as in choosing one you are rejecting another and that can create bad feeling. You might collaborate on a shared vision but rarely with multiple entities and you’d give yourselves plenty of time.

The ‘no subtitles cos we might be hungover’ also goes against the grain of arthouse/ film fest ethos as the idea that subtitles=labour is anathema.

Then you have to get a license to show the film and copyright is owned, often, separately from the print (digital these days) so you can’t just whack on a DVD (even if one exists) or stream from Netflix (loaded with anti projection code). You have to locate and pay for a digital print, or seek a license to use a DVD (schools are different as covered by educational clause in copyright law as long as showing to students not public).

If your audience is buying tickets that costs extra money on licenses and the licenses need to have quite a lot of detail like venue/ time/ venue capacity etc so that takes staff time.

No one would go to all that trouble without having time to advertise and promote — the screen costs £2000 to install plus a film can cost another £800 depending on those details above (or more or less depending on the film which is why you don’t regularly farm out the film choice without a specific budget): the staff will have to organise a fair bit in addition to licensing the film and film print: selling or setting up a booking process, organising payments etc.’ and managing the screen operation, someone to manage the event on the day so quite a big chunk of labour costs (managing volunteers is sometimes more costly in terms of staff costs as they need organised too)

Given how busy they all are and limited human resources etc you wouldn’t just add this in in this way last minute. It was never meant to actually go ahead.

As far as I understand it they’d recently used the screen at the doc event.

The more usual approach would be to apply for funding to use the big screen for specific events and you have to do that in advance and if public funds they usually have to serve the wider community. For something like this, at Pride, you’d probably apply for £5k and need to get that in at least 6 months in advance if not longer and you’d need to specify at that point which partners you are working with and how.

I think MD came up with this on her own after MC has agitated for action and the board had been given advice that if SM refused to work with with groups then that would amount to gross misconduct or if groups withdrew that would amount to reputational damage. MD thought this cooked up option would give them at least one of those if not both and clearly would have worked (going by the decisions of the grievance process) if not for Naomi Cunningham, Charlotte Elves and team in ET.

@Largesso thank you, that was both really helpful and interesting. I hadn't realised it was far fetched on quite so many grounds. I hope NC asks her some questions like "how long does it take to get a license? Time completing the application too, not just the wait once it's made."

MD is coming across, from reading NW's coverage, as someone blundering who could do something I'll advised off the cuff and think she was a genius.

Just read this - genius!😂

I have to remind myself that SM's employer was NOT Belfast Pride, or Belfast Transgender Support Network [invented group] but BELFAST FILM FESTIVAL.
It's about cinema.

The Inclusion statement on their website is the same in 2025 as it was in 2021:

Our Audience Development and Inclusion Programme aims to entertain, inform, engage and empower local communities through the medium of film and film related art-forms.
It delivers events and provides resources and practical support for communities who want to increase their knowledge and understanding of specialised film and the creative processes involved in the development and production of a range of film and digital media. The team works with a variety of local communities across Northern Ireland, in particular with those in the AOD catchment areas, and those in areas of social deprivation. We provide a range of specific projects that include workshops, events, activities and training opportunities.

There's nothing in that to suggest that a staff member who believes in biology, and does not believe that TWAW, is unsuitable to carry out this mission statement about film-related art forms.

It looks like BFF came up with an extra and irrelevant requirement for the job of inclusion coordination and applied it retrospectively to someone who had been doing the job for years before gender ideology was invented.

That's unfair.

It looks like BFF came up with an extra and irrelevant requirement for the job of inclusion coordination and applied it retrospectively to someone who had been doing the job for years before gender ideology was invented.

Punished for not keeping her toaster in the press.

KittyWilkinson
What sort of press? I have been trying to imagine what that phrase means and have got nowhere.

Great post, @Largesso, thank you. That really nails the background to the 'yes, we definitely DID plan all this great stuff and we so DO have documentation, loads of it, I just can’t quite find it at the moment but I can categorically say it’s somewhere, and it’s all your fault I’m not allowed to speak to colleagues to check, and no I can’t explain how those emails came to be on my computer' business. It’s gripping stuff.

(As a side-note, I’m occasionally tangentially involved with a 'public-facing event' and the level of planning and organisation needed is roughly equivalent to what’s required to govern a small country, so my eyebrows were also in my hairline reading about the beanbags etc)

As I understand it, a press is another name for a cupboard or storage chest, as in “clothes press” “linen press”.

It seems to be archaic in most of the country but lingers in NI and possibly other places. My late aunt (lived in NW England but with significant NI family connections and spent a lot of time there) used it occasionally.

Happy to be corrected if wrong.