title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: Legal gender changes have been performed since the 1960s. Transgender people seeking to change their legal gender must receive a medical diagnosis. Only after the legal gender has been changed a transgender individual gets a right to undergo a sex reassignment surgery. The reason for this is because any surgery resulting in infertility is prohibited by Polish law (as stated in Polish Penal Code: Kodeks Karny art. 156 §1), with a few exceptions in cases such as uterine cancer or myoma. That is, castration on request is illegal and transgender individual must first seek a legal change, since just a medical diagnosis from a doctor is not enough.


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: A transgender individual must face a number of obstacles before having their legal gender changed, such as suing their parents. On the basis of offered further evidence (such as a medical diagnosis, medical records, witness/parental statements, etc.) a court may either pass sentence or refuse to do so.


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: In July 2015, the Polish Sejm approved a transgender recognition bill. Under the bill, transgender people would have been able to change gender without any physical interventions, but would have required statements from mental health experts that they are suffering from gender dysphoria. The bill was approved 252 to 158. The Senate proceeded to approve the bill in August, but President Andrzej Duda vetoed it in October. The Parliament failed to override his veto.


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: Since the 1990s, lesbian, gay and bisexual people are not banned from military service and discrimination against them is officially forbidden. However, there is an unwritten rule of "don't ask, don't tell" and most gay Polish soldiers conceal their sexual orientation. In 2013, military personnel told NaTemat.pl portal that openly gay personnel would face social difficulty, especially for higher ranks, as for "commanding staff - officers and high-ranking NCOs - admitting to same-sex attraction would mean losing respect - qualities without which you simply cannot be a commander".


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: Openly transgender people are officially barred from military service on the medical grounds. Diagnosis of gender dysphoria results in being automatically assigned as "permanently and completely unfit for military service, both in the time of conflict and peace".


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: In February 2019, Modern MPs alongside Campaign Against Homophobia activists submitted a draft bill to the Sejm to ban gay conversion therapy. The draft bill aims to ban using, promoting or advertising conversion practices. It will also prohibit promoting people or entities that offer, use, advertize or promote the pseudoscientific practice. The MPs plan to introduce the bill to the Polish Parliament where it will have its first reading in the upcoming months. Such a ban would implement the recommendation of the European Parliament and United Nations Independent Expert on Protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: In August 2020, the Polish Episcopal Conference released a document which recommended the creation of counseling centres "to help people who want to regain their sexual health and natural sexual orientation". It insists that the scientific consensus that conversion therapy is ineffective and potentially harmful to be "political correctness".


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: Gay and bisexual men have been allowed to donate blood in Poland since 2005. In 2008, the National Blood Center established regulations banning blood donation by gay and bisexual men, but the regulations were quickly repealed.


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: According to Gregory E. Czarnecki, there are some similarities between antisemitism and homophobia in Polish nationalist discourse, especially that both groups are seen as deviant and diseased as well as a threat to the nation.


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: A survey from 2005 found that 89% of the population considered homosexuality an unnatural activity. Nevertheless, half believed homosexuality should be tolerated.


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: An opinion poll conducted in late 2006 at the request of the European Commission indicated that Polish public opinion was overwhelmingly opposed to same-sex marriage and to adoption by same-sex couples. A 2006 Eurobarometer poll found that 74% and 89% of Poles respectively were opposed to same-sex marriage and adoption by same-sex couples. Of the EU member states surveyed, only Latvia and Greece had higher levels of opposition. A poll in July 2009 showed that 87% of Poles were against gay adoption. A poll from 23 December 2009 for Newsweek Poland reported another shift towards more positive attitudes. Sixty percent of respondents stated that they would have no objections to having an openly gay minister or a head of government.


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: A 2008 study revealed that 66% of Poles believed that gay people should not have the right to organize public demonstrations, 69% of Poles believed that gay people should not have the right to show their way of life. Also, 37% of Poles believed that gay people should have the right to engage in sexual activity, with 37% believing they should not.


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: In 2010, an IIBR opinion poll conducted for Newsweek Poland found that 43% of Poles agreed that openly gay people should be banned from military service. 38% thought that such a ban should not exist in the Polish military.


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: In 2011, according to a poll by TNS Polska, 54% of Poles supported same-sex partnerships, while 27% supported same-sex marriage.


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: In a 2013 opinion poll conducted by CBOS, 68% of Poles were against gays and lesbians publicly showing their way of life, 65% of Poles were against same-sex civil unions, 72% were against same-sex marriage and 88% were against adoption by same-sex couples.


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: In a CBOS opinion poll from August 2013, a majority (56%) of respondents stated that "homosexuality is always wrong and can never be justified". 26% stated that there is nothing wrong with it and can always be justified". 12% were indifferent.


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: A CBOS opinion poll from February 2014 found that 70% of Poles believed that same-sex sexual activity "is morally unacceptable", while only 22% believed it "is morally acceptable".


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: An Ipsos survey in October 2019 found that a majority of Polish men under 40 believe that "the LGBT movement and gender ideology" is the "biggest threat facing them in the 21st century".


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: According to Polish respondents to the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights 2019 EU LGBTI survey II:


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: According to the survey, Poland has the largest gap between life satisfaction of LGBTI people and the general population.


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: The parties on the left of the political scene generally approve of the postulates of the gay rights movement and vote in favour of LGBT legislation. The New Left, Modern, Labor United, and Your Movement, are supporters of LGBT rights. More socially right-wing parties, such as PiS, Confederation, Agreement and PSL, are generally against any changes in legislation. Out of these, PiS takes the strongest oppositional stance on homosexual issues.


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: While the current opposition, the Civic Platform was strongly disapproving towards LGBT legislation when it was the ruling party in Poland, as of late its leaders have started expressing more favourable stances towards the community.


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: In 2013, former President and Nobel prize winner Lech Wałęsa said that gay MPs should sit at the back of the Parliament or even behind a wall and should not have important positions in Parliament. He also said that pride parades should not take place in the city centres, but in the suburbs of cities. The former president also stated that minorities should not impose themselves upon the majority. Wałęsa could not have been accused of inciting to hatred because the Polish Penal Code does not include inciting to hatred against sexual orientation.


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: The Council of Europe has highlighted "homophobic statements by leading public figures, creating an atmosphere of hate and intolerance" since 2007. In December 2020, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Dunja Mijatović, stated that she was "deeply concerned about the propagation of negative and inflammatory homophobic narratives by many public officials in Poland, including people in the highest ranks of government... Stigmatisation and hate directed at certain individuals or groups of people carry a real risk of legitimising violence, sometimes with fatal consequences."


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: After the 2005 elections, the Law and Justice party (PiS) came to power. They formed a coalition government with the League of Polish Families (LPR) and the Self-Defence Party (Samoobrona). The politicians of these parties have often been labelled as "homophobic" by LGBT rights activists, both before and after the 2005 elections. Prominent government figures have made several homophobic and unscientific comments with regards to homosexuality, and have tried to suppress freedom of speech and freedom of assembly for LGBT people:


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: On 5 July 2006, Mayor of Warsaw Miroslaw Kochalski stated, in relation to the Parada Równości, that the march was "immoral and a danger to the inhabitants of Warsaw."


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: On 7 August 2006, Paweł Zyzak, editor in chief of a PiS magazine, "Right Turn!", wrote that homosexuals were "animals" and "the emissaries of Satan sent to destroy the Catholic Church".


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: In the city of Koscierzyna, Waldemar Bonkowski, a leading member of PiS, hung up a banner that read, "Today it’s gays and lesbians – what’s next, zoophilia? Is that liberty and democracy? No, that’s syphilisation! Our Polish pope is looking down from the sky and asking, 'Whither goest thou, Poland?'" on the wall of the local party headquarters.


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: During the presidential campaign before the 2005 election, Lech Kaczyński, who won the election, stated that he would continue to ban LGBT demonstrations, as he did while Mayor of Warsaw, and that "public promotion of homosexuality will not be allowed".


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: On 17 March 2008, Kaczyński delivered a presidential address to the nation on public television, in which he described same-sex marriage as an institution contrary to the widely accepted moral order in Poland and the moral beliefs of the majority of the population. The address featured a wedding photograph of an Irish gay rights activist, Brendan Fay and Tom Moulton, which Kaczyński had not sought permission to use. The presidential address outraged left-wing political parties and gay rights activists, who subsequently invited the two to Poland and demanded apologies from the President, which he did not issue.


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: On 30 August 2006, during a visit to the European Commission, Lech's twin brother, Jarosław Kaczyński, as the Prime Minister of Poland, stated that "people with such preferences have full rights in Poland, there is no tradition in Poland of persecuting such people". He also asked the President of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso "not to believe in the myth of Poland as an anti-Semitic, homophobic and xenophobic country".


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: Jarosław Kaczyński has been less harsh in his descriptions of homosexuality. In one interview, he stated that he had always been "in favour of tolerance" and that "the issue of intolerance towards gay people had never been a Polish problem". He said he did not recall gays being persecuted in the Polish People's Republic more severely than other minority groups and acknowledged that many eminent Polish celebrities and public figures of that era were widely known to be homosexual. Jarosław Kaczyński also remarked that there are a lot of gay clubs in Poland and that there is a substantial amount of gay press and literature. In another interview abroad, he invited the interviewer to Warsaw to visit one of the many gay clubs in the capital. He also confirmed that there are some homosexuals in his own party, but said they would rather not open their private lives to the public. This was also confirmed by the Member of the European Parliament from PiS, Tadeusz Cymański.


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: In a 2009 interview for Gazeta Wyborcza, former Polish Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz stated that his opinion about homosexual people changed when he met a Polish gay emigrant in London. The man stated that he "fled from Poland because he was gay and would not have freedom in his country". Marcinkiewicz concluded that he would not want anyone to flee from Poland.


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: In a 2015 interview, President-elect, Andrzej Duda, originally from the PiS party, was asked if he would hire a homosexual. He answered that he would not care about personal relationships, as long as the person who was to be hired was not running around half-naked. Andrzej Duda also stated that "matters that are vital for society are not dealt with while others, undoubtedly connected with the leftist ideology, are being pushed forward. They are, in my view, destroying the traditional family which, since the dawn of mankind, has assured its development and endurance."


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: In November 2018, it was reported that President Andrzej Duda would support a ban on "homosexual propaganda", based on the Russian gay propaganda law. He said: "I think that this kind of propaganda should not take place in schools, it has to be calmly and consistently opposed", and that "[i]f such a law was created and would be well written, I do not exclude that I would approach it seriously." Such a law would violate the Polish Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights.


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: In November 2018, following government pressure and threats, more than 200 schools cancelled a planned anti-bullying campaign called "Rainbow Friday", which the Campaign Against Homophobia had promoted in hopes of building greater acceptance for LGBT students in Poland and fighting hatred and homophobia in schools. The Minister of Education, Anna Zalewska, had warned that any principals who allowed such events to take place could face negative consequences. She also asked parents to report any such activities to authorities, however it was reported that many students defied the ban and turned up to school in rainbow colors regardless, and that many schools also refused to comply with the warnings.


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: In April 2019, Conservative party chairman Jarosław Kaczyński called the LGBT rights movement a "foreign imported threat to the nation". During a lecture on patriotism, Kaczynski also said "everyone must accept Christianity". That same month, after an activist displayed posters of the Black Madonna with a rainbow halo, Interior Minister Joachim Brudzinski denounced the posters as "cultural barbarism". The activist was subsequently arrested by the police on charges of "offending religious feelings". Amnesty International condemned the arrest as "just another example of the constant harassment" and said that the activist "now faces up to two years in prison if found guilty under these absurd charges".


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: In June 2019, the newly appointed Minister of National Education, Dariusz Piontkowski, criticised an LGBT rights declaration that Mayor of Warsaw Rafał Trzaskowski had signed, saying that it was "an attempt to sexualize children by force" and "raise children who will be given away to pedophiles at some point".


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: In the 2005 election, the League of Polish Families (LPR) won 8% of the vote and 34 seats in the Sejm. They entered into a coalition government with PiS and Samoobrona. On 19 May 2006, Mirosław Orzechowski, Deputy Minister of Education, stated that an international project organized by LGBT NGOs and financially supported by the European Commission Youth Programme would lead to the "depravity of young people". Wojciech Wierzejski was a Member of the European Parliament, and then a Deputy of the Sejm from the League of Polish Families. In June 2005, while in the European Parliament, he called for "no tolerance for homosexuals and deviants".


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: On 11 May 2006, while an MP, Wierzejski condemned the Warsaw Parada Równości. While condemning the parade, he stated the "deviants" should be "hit with batons". He also commented on the possible presence of German politicians at the parade, saying that "they are not serious politicians, but just gays and a couple of baton strikes will deter them from coming again. Gays are cowards by definition." A day later, he wrote a letter to the Minister of the Interior and Administration and the Minister of Justice, in which he called for law enforcement agencies to check the legal and illegal sources of financing of the organizations of homosexual activists. He accused LGBT organisations of being involved with paedophiles and the illegal drug trade. He also wished to check if homosexual organisations penetrated Polish schools. In response to this, the State Prosecutor ordered all prosecutors to carefully check the financing of LGBT organizations, their alleged connections to criminal movements and their presence in schools. On 2 June 2006, a complaint about Wierzejski's statements had been rejected by the Warsaw district prosecutor, because "the statements cannot be treated as threatening or encouraging to crime".


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: On 8 June 2006, Roman Giertych, the Deputy Prime Minister of Poland and Minister of Education, dismissed Mirosław Sielatycki, the director of the National In-Service Teacher Training Centre, because "a lot of books were encouraging teachers to organize meetings with LGBT non-governmental organizations such as Campaign Against Homophobia or Lambda" and because "these books were criticising the legal situation in most European countries, including Poland, in relation to non-recognition of gay marriage as being a form of discrimination". The new director of the centre said that "homosexual practices lead to drama, emptiness and degeneracy."


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: On 21 May 2006, Roman Giertych said that "LGBT organizations are sending transsexuals to kindergartens and asking children to change their sex".


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: In March 2007, Roman Giertych proposed a bill that would have banned homosexual people from the teaching profession and would also have allowed sacking those teachers who promote "the culture of homosexual lifestyle". At that time, Giertych was the Deputy Prime Minister of Poland and the Minister of Education. The proposition gained a lot of attention in the media and was widely condemned by the European Commission, by Human Rights Watch, as well as by the Union of Polish Teachers, who organized a march through Warsaw (attended by 10,000 people) condemning the Ministry's policy. The bill was not voted on, and the Government soon failed, leading to new parliamentary elections in which the League of Polish Families won no parliamentary seats.


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: In 2007, PBS conducted an opinion poll associated with Roman Giertych's speech at a meeting of EU education ministers in Heidelberg. The pollster asked respondents if they agreed with Minister Giertych's statements:


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: In February 2019, Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, member of the Civic Platform, signed a 12-point LGBT declaration. Proposed actions range from providing shelter to LGBT teenagers rejected by their families, the introduction of local crisis intervention helplines, and providing access to anti-discrimination and sex education at city schools.


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: Your Movement supports LGBT rights, including same-sex marriage and civil unions. A prominent party member is gay activist, former member of the Sejm (2011–2014) and former Mayor of Słupsk (2014–2018) Robert Biedroń. He has been described as a young, rising political star in Poland, and is viewed as a frontrunner for the presidency. Former President Aleksander Kwasniewski has urged him to run for president in 2020. Opinion polls currently put him in third place, behind Andrzej Duda and Donald Tusk.


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: Biedroń has spoken of significant societal change towards homosexuality and LGBT people. He had occasionally been publicly beaten on the streets and insulted, but said in 2018 that residents now smile and greet him. As a mayor, Biedroń marries local couples. "I’m extremely jealous because I see their happiness. I’m 15 years with my partner and it’s still a dream. It’s not fair that in 2018 two adults cannot get married if they love each other and are committed to each other.", he said.


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: In February 2019, LGBT activist Robert Biedroń launched Spring, a new progressive political party proposing to introduce civil partnerships for opposite-sex and same-sex couples, and the legalisation of same-sex marriage. As of August 2019, the party has three MEPs.


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: While ahead of the 2015 Polish parliamentary election, the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party took an anti-migrant stance, in the run-up to the 2019 Polish parliamentary election the party has focused on countering Western "LGBT ideology". Several Polish municipalities and four Voivodeships made so-called "LGBT-free zone" declarations, partly in response to the signing of a declaration in support of LGBT rights by Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski. While only symbolic, the declared zones signal exclusion of the LGBT community. The right wing "Gazeta Polska" newspaper issued "LGBT-free zone" stickers to readers. The Polish opposition and diplomats, including US Ambassador to Poland Georgette Mosbacher, condemned the stickers. The Warsaw District Court ordered that distribution of the stickers should halt pending the resolution of a court case. However, Gazeta's editor dismissed the ruling saying it was "fake news" and censorship, and that the paper would continue distributing the sticker. Gazeta continued with the distribution of the stickers, but modified the decal to read "LGBT Ideology-Free Zone".


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: In August 2019, LGBT community members stated that they feel unsafe in Poland. The All Out organization launched a campaign to counter the attacks. Some 10,000 people signed a petition shortly after the campaign launch.


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: During the coronavirus pandemic in April 2020, several LGBT activists began handing out rainbow facemasks within certain of the concerned local government areas as a direct protest of the "LGBT-free zoning".


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: In July 2020, the town council of Nieuwegein, a Dutch city south of Utrecht, voted to end its friendship with Puławy in eastern Poland, citing "gay free zones" as the reason.


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: Since July 2020, the European Union has started denying funds to municipalities that adopted "LGBT-free" declarations.


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: In September 2020, ambassadors from 50 countries stationed in Poland published an open letter "[paying] tribute to the hard work of LGBTI and other communities in Poland and around the world" and calling to "end discrimination in particular on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity". Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki rejected the call, saying that "tolerance belongs to Polish DNA... Nobody needs to teach us tolerance, because we are a nation that has learned such tolerance for centuries", while senior politician Joachim Brudzinski tweeted that "we are waiting with hope for the next letter, this time in defense of murdered Christians, imprisoned #ProLife activists, people dismissed from work and persecuted for quoting the Bible, [and] people subjected to euthanasia against their will."


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: According to a December 2020 report by the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, "Far from being merely words on paper, these declarations and charters directly impact the lives of LGBTI people in Poland."


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: The largest aspect of the LGBT movement in Poland is the equality parade held in Warsaw every year since 2001.


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: In 2004 and 2005, Warsaw officials denied permission to organize it, because of various reasons including the likelihood of counter-demonstrations, interference with religious or national holidays, and the lack of a permit. Despite this, about 2,500 people marched illegally on 11 June 2005. Ten people were arrested. The ban has been declared illegal by the "Bączkowski v Poland" ruling of the European Court of Human Rights in 2007.


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: The parade was condemned by the Mayor of Warsaw Lech Kaczyński, who said that allowing an official pride event in Warsaw would promote a "homosexual lifestyle".


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: The Parada Równości events have continued regularly since 2006, attracting crowds of less than 10,000 every year, until 2015 when the parade attracted 18 thousand attendees. Since then, attendance has increased dramatically, culminating in the 2018 parade which attracted 45,000 attendees. On 8 June 2019, around 50,000 people marched in the event. Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski participated in the event for the first time and said that he wanted Warsaw to remain "open" and "tolerant."


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: In 2005, 33% of the Warsaw population were for the organisation of the Parada Równości. In 2008, that figure fell to 25%.


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: A 2010 opinion poll, conducted by PBS for Gazeta Wyborcza, showed that 45% of Warsaw residents supported the parade.


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: In recent years, the parade has attracted widespread support from corporations and regional governments. The main partner of the 2018 parade was the regional Government of the Masovian Voivodeship, of which Warsaw is a part.


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: In a 2014 survey, conducted by CBOS for Dr. Natalia Zimniewicz, 30% of Poles wanted a ban on public promotion of gay content, and 17.3% would not support that ban, but would want another form of limiting the freedom of promotion of such information.


title: LGBT rights in Poland

text: 52.5% thought that the current scale of promotion of gay content is excessive, 27.9% thought that pictures of gay parades or practices disgust them, 22.3% thought that the media blur the true image of homosexuality and 29.3% thought that gay content is not a private matter of the homosexual community, but affect children and other citizens.


title: Justin Hurwitz

text: Justin Gabriel Hurwitz (born January 22, 1985) is an American film composer and a television writer. He is best known for his longtime collaboration with director Damien Chazelle, scoring each of his films: "Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench" (2009), "Whiplash" (2014), "La La Land" (2016), "First Man" (2018), and "Babylon" (2022).


title: Justin Hurwitz

text: For "La La Land", Hurwitz won two Academy Awards, Best Original Score and Best Original Song (for "City of Stars"), as well as the Golden Globe Awards for Best Original Score and Best Original Song and the BAFTA Award for Best Film Music. For "First Man" he won the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score, and was nominated in the same category for "Babylon".


title: Justin Hurwitz

text: Hurwitz was born in California, the son of Gail (née Halabe), a professional ballet dancer turned registered nurse, and Ken Hurwitz, a writer. He is of Jewish heritage (from Russia, Poland, Damascus in Syria, and Beirut in Lebanon). His family moved to Wisconsin in 1998 where he attended Nicolet High School.


title: Justin Hurwitz

text: Hurwitz attended Harvard University, where he was roommates with director Damien Chazelle. They collaborated on a student film that would become "Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench", which was released in 2009. While in school, Hurwitz was a member of the "Harvard Lampoon" and was an original member of the indie-pop band Chester French with Chazelle.


title: Justin Hurwitz

text: After college, Hurwitz and Chazelle moved to Los Angeles where Hurwitz wrote comedy for the sitcom "The League" and one episode of the animated comedy TV series "The Simpsons". Thanks to the success of "Guy and Madeline", they were able to obtain financing for their next collaboration, the 2014 film "Whiplash" – with Hurwitz scoring the film and Chazelle writing and directing. Hurwitz also scored Chazelle's 2016 film "La La Land", for which Chazelle won the Oscar for Best Director and Hurwitz won two Oscars for Best Original Score and Best Original Song.


title: Kingdom of Italy (Holy Roman Empire)

text: The Kingdom of Italy ( or "Regnum Italicum"; ; ), also called Imperial Italy (, ), was one of the constituent kingdoms of the Holy Roman Empire, along with the kingdoms of Germany, Bohemia, and Burgundy. It originally comprised large parts of northern and central Italy. Its original capital was Pavia until the 11th century.


title: Kingdom of Italy (Holy Roman Empire)

text: In 773, Charlemagne, the king of the Franks, crossed the Alps to invade the Kingdom of the Lombards, which encompassed all of Italy except the Duchy of Rome, the Venetian Republic and the Byzantine possessions in the south. In June 774, the kingdom collapsed and the Franks became masters of northern Italy. The southern areas remained under Lombard control, as the Duchy of Benevento was changed into the rather independent Principality of Benevento. Charlemagne called himself king of the Lombards and in 800 was crowned emperor in Rome. Members of the Carolingian dynasty continued to rule Italy until the deposition of Charles the Fat in 887, after which they once briefly regained the throne in 894–896. Until 961, the rule of Italy was continually contested by several aristocratic families from both within and outside the kingdom.


title: Kingdom of Italy (Holy Roman Empire)

text: In 961, King Otto I of Germany, already married to Queen Adelaide of Italy, invaded the kingdom and had himself crowned in Pavia on 25 December. He continued on to Rome, where he had himself crowned emperor on 7 February 962. The union of the crowns of Italy and Germany with that of the so-called "Empire of the Romans" proved stable. Burgundy was added to this union in 1032, and by the twelfth century the term "Holy Roman Empire" had come into use to describe it. From 961 on, the emperor was usually also king of Italy and Germany, although emperors sometimes appointed their heirs to rule in Italy and occasionally the Italian bishops and noblemen elected a king of their own in opposition to that of Germany. The absenteeism of the Italian monarch led to the rapid disappearance of a central government in the High Middle Ages, but the idea that Italy was a kingdom within the Empire remained and emperors frequently sought to impose their will on the evolving Italian city-states. The resulting wars between Guelphs and Ghibellines, the anti-imperialist and imperialist factions, respectively, were characteristic of Italian politics in the 12th–14th centuries. The Lombard League was the most famous example of this situation; though not a declared separatist movement, it openly challenged the emperor's claim to power.


title: Kingdom of Italy (Holy Roman Empire)

text: The century between the Humiliation of Canossa (1077) and the Treaty of Venice of 1177 resulted in the formation of city states independent of the Germanic emperor. A series of wars in Lombardy from 1423 to 1454 reduced the number of competing states in Italy. The next forty years were relatively peaceful in Italy, but in 1494 the peninsula was invaded by France.


title: Kingdom of Italy (Holy Roman Empire)

text: After the Imperial Reform of 1495–1512, the Italian kingdom corresponded to the unencircled territories south of the Alps. Juridically the emperor maintained an interest in them as nominal king and overlord, but the "government" of the kingdom consisted of little more than the plenipotentiaries the emperor appointed to represent him and those governors he appointed to rule his own Italian states.


title: Kingdom of Italy (Holy Roman Empire)

text: The Habsburg rule in several parts of Italy continued in various forms but came to an end with the campaigns of the French Revolutionaries in 1792–1797, when a series of sister republics were set up with local support by Napoleon and then united into the Italian Republic under his presidency. In 1805 the Republic became a new Kingdom of Italy, in personal union with France.


title: Kingdom of Italy (Holy Roman Empire)

text: After the Battle of Taginae, in which the Ostrogoth king Totila was killed, the Byzantine general Narses captured Rome and besieged Cumae. Teia, the new Ostrogothic king, gathered the remnants of the Ostrogothic army and marched to relieve the siege, but in October 552 Narses ambushed him at "Mons Lactarius" (modern Monti Lattari) in Campania, near Mount Vesuvius and Nuceria Alfaterna. The battle lasted two days and Teia was killed in the fighting. Ostrogothic power in Italy was eliminated, but according to Roman historian Procopius of Caesarea, Narses allowed the Ostrogothic population and their Rugian allies to live peacefully in Italy under Roman sovereignty. The absence of any real authority in Italy immediately after the battle led to an invasion by the Franks and Alemanni, but they too were defeated in the battle of the Volturnus and the peninsula was, for a short time, reintegrated into the empire.


title: Kingdom of Italy (Holy Roman Empire)

text: The Kings of the Lombards (, singular "") ruled those Germanic people from their invasion of Italy in 567–68 until the Lombardic identity became lost in the ninth and tenth centuries. After 568, the Lombard kings sometimes styled themselves Kings of Italy (). Upon the Lombard defeat at the 774 Siege of Pavia, the kingdom came under the Frankish domination of Charlemagne. The Iron Crown of Lombardy ("Corona Ferrea") was used for the coronation of the Lombard kings, and the kings of Italy thereafter, for centuries.


title: Kingdom of Italy (Holy Roman Empire)

text: The primary sources for the Lombard kings before the Frankish conquest are the anonymous 7th-century "Origo Gentis Langobardorum" and the 8th-century "Historia Langobardorum" of Paul the Deacon. The earliest kings (the pre-Lethings) listed in the "Origo" are almost certainly legendary. They purportedly reigned during the Migration Period; the first ruler attested independently of Lombard tradition is Tato.


title: Kingdom of Italy (Holy Roman Empire)

text: The actual control of the sovereigns of both the major areas that constitute the kingdom – "Langobardia Major" in the centre-north (in turn divided into a western, or Neustria, and one eastern, or Austria and Tuskia) and "Langobardia Minor" in the centre-south, was not constant during the two centuries of life of the kingdom. An initial phase of strong autonomy of the many constituent duchies developed over time with growing regal authority, even if the dukes' desires for autonomy were never fully achieved.


title: Kingdom of Italy (Holy Roman Empire)

text: The Lombard kingdom proved to be more stable than its Ostrogothic predecessor, but in 774, on the pretext of defending the Papacy, it was conquered by the Franks under Charlemagne. They kept the Italo-Lombard realm separate from their own, but the kingdom shared in all the partitions, divisions, civil wars, and succession crises of the Carolingian Empire of which it became a part until, by the end of the ninth century, the Italian kingdom was an independent, but highly decentralised, state.


title: Kingdom of Italy (Holy Roman Empire)

text: The death of the Emperor Lothair I in 855 led to his realm of Middle Francia being split among his three sons. The eldest, Louis II, inherited the Carolingian lands in Italy, which were now for the first time (save the brief rule of Charlemagne's son Pepin in the first decade of the century), ruled as a distinct unit. The kingdom included all of Italy as far south as Rome and Spoleto, but the rest of Italy to the south was under the rule of the Lombard Principality of Benevento or of the Byzantine Empire.


title: Kingdom of Italy (Holy Roman Empire)

text: Following Louis II's death without heirs, there were several decades of confusion. The Imperial crown was initially disputed among the Carolingian rulers of West Francia (France) and East Francia (Germany), with first the western king (Charles the Bald) and then the eastern (Charles the Fat) attaining the prize. Following the deposition of the latter, local nobles – Guy III of Spoleto and Berengar of Friuli – disputed over the crown, and outside intervention did not cease, with Arnulf of Eastern Francia and Louis the Blind of Provence both claiming the Imperial throne for a time. The kingdom was also beset by Arab raiding parties from Sicily and North Africa, and central authority was minimal at best.


title: Kingdom of Italy (Holy Roman Empire)

text: In the 10th century, the situation hardly improved, as various Burgundian and local noblemen continued to dispute over the crown. Order was only imposed from outside, when the German king Otto I invaded Italy and seized both the Imperial and Italian thrones for himself in 962.


title: Kingdom of Italy (Holy Roman Empire)

text: In 951, King Otto I of Germany married Adelaide of Burgundy, the widow of late King Lothair II of Italy. Otto assumed the Iron Crown of Lombardy at Pavia despite his rival Margrave Berengar of Ivrea. When in 960 Berengar attacked the Papal States, King Otto, summoned by Pope John XII, conquered the Italian kingdom and on 2 February 962 had himself crowned Holy Roman Emperor at Rome. From that time on, the Kings of Italy were always also Kings of Germany, and Italy thus became a constituent kingdom of the Holy Roman Empire, along with the Kingdom of Germany ("regnum Teutonicorum") and – from 1032 – Burgundy. The German king ("Rex Romanorum") would be crowned by the Archbishop of Milan with the Iron Crown in Pavia as a prelude to the visit to Rome to be crowned Emperor by the Pope.


title: Kingdom of Italy (Holy Roman Empire)

text: In general, the monarch was an absentee, spending most of his time in Germany and leaving the Kingdom of Italy with little central authority. There was also a lack of powerful landed magnates – the only notable one being the Margraviate of Tuscany, which had wide lands in Tuscany, Lombardy, and the Emilia, but which failed due to lack of heirs after the death of Matilda of Canossa in 1115. This left a power vacuum – increasingly filled by the Papacy and by the bishops, as well as by the increasingly wealthy Italian cities, which gradually came to dominate the surrounding countryside. Upon the death of Emperor Otto III in 1002, one of late Berengar's successors, Margrave Arduin of Ivrea, even succeeded in assuming the Italian crown and in defeating the Imperial forces under Duke Otto I of Carinthia. Not until 1004 could the new German King Henry II of Germany, by the aid of Bishop Leo of Vercelli, move into Italy to have himself crowned "rex Italiae". Arduin ranks as the last domestic "King of Italy" before the accession of Victor Emmanuel II in 1861.


title: Kingdom of Italy (Holy Roman Empire)

text: Henry's Salian successor Conrad II tried to confirm his dominion against Archbishop Aribert of Milan and other Italian aristocrats ("seniores"). While besieging Milan in 1037, he issued the "Constitutio de feudis" in order to secure the support of the "vasvassores" petty gentry, whose fiefs he declared hereditary. Indeed, Conrad could stable his rule, however, the Imperial supremacy in Italy remained contested.


title: Kingdom of Italy (Holy Roman Empire)

text: The cities first demonstrated their increasing power during the reign of the Hohenstaufen Emperor Frederick Barbarossa (1152–1190), whose attempts to restore imperial authority in the peninsula led to a series of wars with the Lombard League, a league of northern Italian cities, most of the times headed by Milan, and ultimately to a decisive victory for the League at the Battle of Legnano in 1176, that had as its leader the Milanese Guido da Landriano, which forced Frederick to make administrative, political, and judicial concessions to the municipalities, officially ending his attempt to dominate Northern Italy. From then, Italy became a patchwork of autonomous duchies and city-states only nominally tied to the Holy Roman Empire.


title: Kingdom of Italy (Holy Roman Empire)

text: Frederick's son Henry VI actually managed to extend Hohenstaufen authority in Italy by his conquest of the Norman Kingdom of Sicily, which comprised Sicily and all of Southern Italy. Henry's son, Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor – the first emperor since the 10th century to actually base himself in Italy – attempted to return to his father's task of restoring imperial authority in the northern Italian Kingdom, which led to fierce opposition not only from a reformed Lombard League, but also from the Popes, who had become increasingly jealous of their temporal realm in central Italy (theoretically a part of the Empire), and concerned about the hegemonic ambitions of the Hohenstaufen emperors.


title: Kingdom of Italy (Holy Roman Empire)

text: Frederick II's efforts to bring all of Italy under his control failed as signally as those of his grandfather, and his death in 1250 marked the effective end of the Kingdom of Italy as a genuine political unit. Conflict continued between Ghibellines (Imperial supporters) and Guelfs (Papal supporters) in the Italian cities, but these conflicts bore less and less relation to the origins of the parties in question.


title: Kingdom of Italy (Holy Roman Empire)

text: The Italian campaigns of the Holy Roman Emperors decreased, but the Kingdom did not become wholly meaningless. In 1310 the Luxembourg King Henry VII of Germany with 5,000 men again crossed the Alps, moved into Milan and had himself crowned with the Iron Crown of Lombardy, sparking a Guelph rebellion under Lord Guido della Torre. Henry restored the rule of Matteo I Visconti and proceeded to Rome, where he was crowned Holy Roman Emperor by three cardinals in place of Pope Clement V in 1312. His further plans to restore the Imperial rule and to invade the Kingdom of Naples were aborted by his sudden death the next year.


title: Kingdom of Italy (Holy Roman Empire)

text: Successive emperors in the 14th and 15th centuries were bound in the struggle between the rivaling Luxembourg, Habsburg and Wittelsbach dynasties. In the conflict with Frederick the Fair, King Louis IV (reigned until 1347) had himself crowned Emperor in Rome by Antipope Nicholas V in 1328. His successor Charles IV also returned to Rome to be crowned in 1355. None of the Emperors forgot their theoretical claims to dominion as Kings of Italy. Nor did the Italians themselves forget the claims of the Emperors to universal dominion: writers like Dante Alighieri (died 1321) and Marsilius of Padua (c. 1275 – c. 1342) expressed their commitment both to the principle of universal monarchy, and to the actual pretensions of Emperors Henry VII and Louis IV, respectively.


title: Kingdom of Italy (Holy Roman Empire)

text: The Imperial claims to dominion in Italy mostly manifested themselves, however, in the granting of titles to the various strongmen who had begun to establish their control over the formerly republican cities. Most notably, the Emperors gave their backing to the Visconti of Milan, and King Wenceslaus created Gian Galeazzo Visconti Duke of Milan in 1395. Other families to receive new titles from the emperors were the Gonzaga of Mantua, and the Este of Ferrara and Modena.


title: Kingdom of Italy (Holy Roman Empire)

text: By the beginning of the early modern period, the Kingdom in Italy still formally existed but had "de facto" splintered into completely independent and self-governing city states. Its territory had been significantly limited – the conquests of the Republic of Venice in the "domini di Terraferma" and those of the Papal States had taken most of northeastern and central Italy outside the jurisdiction of the Empire.


title: Kingdom of Italy (Holy Roman Empire)

text: In many aspects, the Imperial claims to feudal overlordship over the Italian territories had become practically meaningless: the effective political authority, as well as the power to raise taxes and spend resources, was in the hands of the Italian princes and dukes. However, the presence of the Imperial feudal network in Italy continued to play a role in the history of the peninsula. It gave to the emperors Sigismund and Maximilian I the pretext to intervene in Italian affairs. Furthermore, the Imperial rights were notably asserted during the Italian Wars by Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor (also King of Spain and Naples, Archduke of Austria and Duke of Burgundy). He drove the French from Milan after the Battle of Pavia, and prevented an attempt by the Italian princes, with French aid, to reassert their independence in the League of Cognac. His mutinous troops sacked Rome and, coming to terms with the Medici pope Clement VII, conquered Florence where he reinstalled the Medici as Dukes of Florence after a siege. Charles V was crowned King of Italy with the Iron Crown in medieval fashion and, upon the extinction of the Sforza line of Milan in 1535, claimed direct possession of that territory as an Imperial fief. After Charles divided his possession between a Spanish and Austrian branch, Milan became a possession of the Spanish Empire of Charles's son Philip II of Spain, whereas the title of Holy Roman Emperor and the rights connected to Imperial Italy were transferred to Charles's brother, Ferdinand I. Milan continued to be a state of the Holy Roman Empire so that, in his position as Duke of Milan, Philip II was, at least formally, a vassal of Emperor Ferdinand. However, following the reign of Charles V, no Holy Roman Emperor of the Austrian Habsburgs was crowned King of Italy and the title effectively ceased to be used for two centuries and a half.


title: Kingdom of Italy (Holy Roman Empire)

text: In 1559, the Kingdom of France ended its ambitions over the Imperial fiefs in Italy, abandoning its claims to Savoy and Milan and withdrawing from Tuscany and Genoese Corsica by the terms of the peace of Cateau-Cambrésis, and a special section of the Imperial Aulic Council in Vienna was established to deal with Italian affairs and legal appeals coming from the peninsula. The major imperial fiefs in Italy were known as "Feuda latina", whereas the smaller ones were known as "Feuda Minora". Italian princes sometimes took part in Imperial diets and their forces also joined the Imperial army, as in the case of the Hungarian campaign of Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor against Suleyman the Magnificent in 1566.


title: Kingdom of Italy (Holy Roman Empire)

text: While they were excluded from the Reichstag, the Italian states were still considered vassals of the emperor, like other states of the empire, and thus subject to certain obligations and jurisdiction. A special Italian section of the Reichshofrat was created in 1559. It handled 1,500 cases from Imperial Italy between 1559 and 1806 (out of 140,000 total), with most of those cases coming from later dates. Italian states provided significant support in all of the Empire's wars in this time, either under their own princes or as part of the Habsburg territories (such as the Free Imperial City of Trieste, the County of Gorizia and Gradisca, the Duchy of Milan, and later the Grand Duchy of Tuscany). Unlike most of the German states, the Imperial Italian contributions bypassed the Reichstag and other institutions and went directly to the Imperial army and treasury. The Italian states were in large part autonomous, but their lack of representation gave the emperor greater ability to act autonomously with the Italian principalities than the German ones, such as when he decided to simply add the Grand Duchy of Tuscany (officially an imperial fief) to his family's lands after the extinction of its ruling line. Aside from Trent, Piedmont-Savoy was the only independent Italian state represented in the Reichstag and also the only one to be part of the circle system (being within the Upper Rhenish Circle; the Habsburg possessions of Trieste and Gorizia-Gradisca were within the Austrian Circle, as was Trent). Thus despite being opposed to the Habsburg family, it still emphasized its imperial privileges to establish itself as suzerain over smaller surrounding lordships. In 1696, the emperor raised Savoy to grand duchy status, and in 1713 the grand dukes of Savoy also became kings through their holdings outside the Empire (first crowned the Kings of Sicily in 1713, swapped in 1720 for the title of King of Sardinia).


title: Kingdom of Italy (Holy Roman Empire)

text: Imperial authority was used by the Austrian Habsburgs to intervene in Italy during the War of Mantuan Succession phase of the Thirty Years' War and to take control of vacant Italian imperial fiefs during the European Wars of Succession of the 18th century: following the extinction of the Spanish Habsburgs in 1700, the Emperor proclaimed Milan a vacant Imperial fief and added it to his direct Austrian dominions in 1707 (confirmed by the Treaty of Rastatt at the end of the War of the Spanish succession); the Gonzaga of Mantua were deposed at the Diet of Regensburg in 1708 on charges of felony towards the Holy Roman Emperor and their state incorporated into Austrian Milan; following the extinction of the Florentine House of Medici in 1737, Francis I of Habsburg-Lorraine was invested with the Grand Duchy of Tuscany by Imperial diploma; a similar use of Imperial rights allowed the Habsburgs to establish dynastic branches in Parma and Modena.


title: Kingdom of Italy (Holy Roman Empire)

text: Emperor Leopold I increasingly asserted his rights over the imperial fiefdoms of Italy from the 1660s with the decline of Spanish power and more overt intervention of the French. In 1687, a new plenipotentiary of Italy was appointed, a position that had been left vacant for over a century prior (the powers of the office had instead been exercised haphazardly by the Aulic Council). In 1690, Prince Eugene tried to levy an imperial tax over Italy to pay for war expenses, the first time such a thing had been done. Then, in 1696, Leopold issued an edict mandating all of his Italian vassals to renew their oaths of allegiance within a year and a day on pain of forfeit. The renewal of fiefdoms incensed the papacy, some of whose own vassals now dug out ancient documents ostensibly proving them to be vassals of the Emperor. Smaller states of Italy saw the Emperor as their protector against larger territories like Savoy and the papacy. Imperial authority strengthened throughout the 18th century, with Lombardy (Milan and Mantua) passing to the Habsburg family as vacant imperial fiefs during the War of the Spanish Succession, the end of the War of the Quadruple Alliance reconfirming the statuses of Tuscany, Modena-Reggio, and Parma-Piacenza (Emilia) as imperial fiefs, and the Habsburgs continuing to rule the Italian territories of their hereditary lands (roughly the modern provinces of Trentino-Alto Adige and the Austrian Littoral). Piedmont-Savoy, on the other hand, remained defiant of Imperial authority despite officially participating in the diet and the duke receiving the title of "Royal Highness" from the Emperor in 1693.


title: Kingdom of Italy (Holy Roman Empire)

text: The status of Imperial Italy was more or less stable up to 1789. There was even a serious push by the Savoyards (backed by Prussia) to raise Savoy to electorate status in 1788, which would make it only the second non-German state to become so (after Bohemia). This came to nothing as the French Revolution of 1789 would quickly shatter the old order.


title: Kingdom of Italy (Holy Roman Empire)

text: During the French Revolutionary Wars, the Austrians were driven from Italy by Napoleon, who set up republics throughout northern Italy, and by the Treaty of Campo Formio of 1797, Emperor Francis II relinquished any claims over the territories that made up the Kingdom of Italy. The imperial reorganization carried out in 1799–1803 left no room for Imperial claims to Italy – even the Archbishop of Cologne was gone, secularized along with the other ecclesiastical princes. Napoleon's victory in the War of the Second Coalition saw this reconfirmed in the Treaty of Lunéville. In 1805, while the Holy Roman Empire was still in existence, Napoleon, by now Emperor Napoleon I, claimed the crown of the new Kingdom of Italy for himself, putting the Iron Crown on his head at Milan on 26 May 1805. He also directly annexed most of the former imperial Italy (including Piedmont-Savoy, Liguria, and Tuscany) into France. The Empire itself was abolished the next year on 6 August 1806. The Congress of Vienna following Napoleon's defeat did not bring back the Holy Roman Empire nor the Kingdom of Italy, and the restored Italian Duchies now became fully sovereign in their own right.


title: Subtitles

text: Subtitles and captions are lines of dialogue or other text displayed at the bottom of the screen in films, television programs, video games or other visual media. They can be transcriptions of the screenplay, translations of it, or information to help viewers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing understand what is shown.


title: Subtitles

text: Subtitles refer to a text translation of audio into a different language and are for people who can hear the audio, but may not be able to understand the dialogue. Captions are text in the language of the audio and are designed for anyone unable to hear the audio, they often also contain important sounds that would be unavailable for anyone unable to hear the audio.


title: Subtitles

text: Open captions are "burnt" into the video and will therefore always be visible, while closed captions (CC) can be toggled on and off according to the preference of the viewer.


title: Subtitles

text: Subtitles can be rendered as part of the video or separately as graphics or text overlaid on the video.


title: Subtitles

text: Sometimes, mainly at film festivals, subtitles may be shown on a separate display below the screen, thus saving the film-maker from creating a subtitled copy for perhaps just one showing. Television subtitling for the deaf and hard-of-hearing is also referred to as closed captioning in some countries.


title: Subtitles

text: More exceptional uses also include operas, such as Verdi's "Aida", where sung lyrics in Italian are subtitled in English or in another local language outside the stage area on luminous screens for the audience to follow the storyline, or on a screen attached to the back of the chairs in front of the audience.


title: Subtitles

text: The word "subtitle" is the prefix "sub-" ("below") followed by "title". In some cases, such as live opera, the dialogue is displayed above the stage in what are referred to as "surtitles" ("sur-" meaning "above").


title: Subtitles

text: Professional subtitlers usually work with specialized computer software and hardware where the video is digitally stored on a hard disk, making each individual frame instantly accessible. Besides creating the subtitles, the subtitler usually also tells the computer software the exact positions where each subtitle should appear and disappear. For cinema film, this task is traditionally done by separate technicians. The result is a subtitle file containing the actual subtitles as well as position markers indicating where each subtitle should appear and disappear. These markers are usually based on timecode if it is a work for electronic media (e.g., TV, video, DVD), or on film length (measured in feet and frames) if the subtitles are to be used for traditional cinema film.


title: Subtitles

text: Subtitles can also be created by individuals using freely available subtitle-creation software like Subtitle Workshop for Windows, MovieCaptioner for Mac/Windows, and Subtitle Composer for Linux, and then hardcode them onto a video file with programs such as VirtualDub in combination with VSFilter which could also be used to show subtitles as softsubs in many software video players.


title: Subtitles

text: For example, on YouTube, automatic captions are available in English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Indonesian, and Spanish. If automatic captions are available for the language, they will automatically be published on the video.


title: Subtitles

text: Same-language captions, i.e., without translation, were primarily intended as an aid for people who are deaf or hard-of-hearing.


title: Subtitles

text: Same-language captioning can improve literacy and reading growth across a broad range of reading abilities. It is used for this purpose by national television broadcasters in China and in India such as Doordarshan. It is also increasingly popular among younger viewers for several reasons: it allows them to understand dialogue that is poorly enunciated or in difficult-to-understand dialects; and it allows them to quickly take in what happens on-screen, which allows them to alternate their attention between the subtitled medium and their smartphone. A 2021 UK survey found that 80% of viewers between 18 and 25 regularly used subtitles, while less than a quarter of those between 56 and 75 did.


title: Subtitles

text: Same language subtitling (SLS) is the use of synchronized captioning of musical lyrics (or any text with an audio/video source) as a repeated reading activity. The basic reading activity involves students viewing a short subtitled presentation projected onscreen, while completing a response worksheet. To be really effective, the subtitling should have high quality synchronization of audio and text, and better yet, subtitling should change color in syllabic synchronization to audio model, and the text should be at a level to challenge students' language abilities.


title: Subtitles

text: Closed captioning is the American term for closed subtitles specifically intended for people who are deaf or hard-of-hearing. These are a transcription rather than a translation, and usually also contain lyrics and descriptions of important non-dialogue audio such as "(SIGHS)", "(WIND HOWLING)", "("SONG TITLE" PLAYING)", "(KISSES)", "(THUNDER RUMBLING)" and "(DOOR CREAKING)". From the expression "closed captions", the word "caption" has in recent years come to mean a subtitle intended for the deaf or hard-of-hearing, be it "open" or "closed". In British English, "subtitles" usually refers to subtitles for the deaf or hard-of-hearing (SDH); however, the term "SDH" is sometimes used when there is a need to make a distinction between the two.


title: Subtitles

text: Programs such as news bulletins, current affairs programs, sports, some talk shows, and political and special events utilize real time or online captioning. Live captioning is increasingly common, especially in the United Kingdom and the United States, as a result of regulations that stipulate that virtually all TV eventually must be accessible for people who are deaf and hard-of-hearing. In practice, however, these "real time" subtitles will typically lag the audio by several seconds due to the inherent delay in transcribing, encoding, and transmitting the subtitles. Real time subtitles are also challenged by typographic errors or mishearing of the spoken words, with no time available to correct before transmission.


title: Subtitles

text: Some programs may be prepared in their entirety several hours before broadcast, but with insufficient time to prepare a timecoded caption file for automatic play-out. Pre-prepared captions look similar to offline captions, although the accuracy of cueing may be compromised slightly as the captions are not locked to program timecode.


title: Subtitles

text: Newsroom captioning involves the automatic transfer of text from the newsroom computer system to a device which outputs it as captions. It does work, but its suitability as an exclusive system would only apply to programs which had been scripted in their entirety on the newsroom computer system, such as short interstitial updates.


title: Subtitles

text: In the United States and Canada, some broadcasters have used it exclusively and simply left uncaptioned sections of the bulletin for which a script was unavailable. Newsroom captioning limits captions to pre-scripted materials and, therefore, does not cover 100% of the news, weather and sports segments of a typical local news broadcast which are typically not pre-scripted. This includes last-second breaking news or changes to the scripts, ad-lib conversations of the broadcasters, and emergency or other live remote broadcasts by reporters in-the-field. By failing to cover items such as these, newsroom style captioning (or use of the teleprompter for captioning) typically results in coverage of less than 30% of a local news broadcast.


title: Subtitles

text: Communication access real-time translation (CART) stenographers, who use a computer with using either stenotype or Velotype keyboards to transcribe stenographic input for presentation as captions within two or three seconds of the representing audio, must caption anything which is purely live and unscripted; however, more recent developments include operators using speech recognition software and re-voicing the dialogue. Speech recognition technology has advanced so quickly in the United States that about 50% of all live captioning was through speech recognition as of 2005. Real-time captions look different from offline captions, as they are presented as a continuous flow of text as people speak.


title: Subtitles

text: Stenography is a system of rendering words phonetically, and English, with its multitude of homophones (e.g., there, their, they're), is particularly unsuited to easy transcriptions. Stenographers working in courts and inquiries usually have 24 hours in which to deliver their transcripts. Consequently, they may enter the same phonetic stenographic codes for a variety of homophones, and fix up the spelling later. Real-time stenographers must deliver their transcriptions accurately and immediately. They must therefore develop techniques for keying homophones differently, and be unswayed by the pressures of delivering accurate product on immediate demand.


title: Subtitles

text: Submissions to recent captioning-related inquiries have revealed concerns from broadcasters about captioning sports. Captioning sports may also affect many different people because of the weather outside of it. In much sport captioning's absence, the Australian Caption Centre submitted to the National Working Party on Captioning (NWPC), in November 1998, three examples of sport captioning, each performed on tennis, rugby league and swimming programs:


title: Subtitles

text: The NWPC concluded that the standard they accept is the comprehensive real-time method, which gives them access to the commentary in its entirety. Also, not all sports are live. Many events are pre-recorded hours before they are broadcast, allowing a captioner to caption them using offline methods.


title: Subtitles

text: Because different programs are produced under different conditions, a case-by-case basis must consequently determine captioning methodology. Some bulletins may have a high incidence of truly live material, or insufficient access to video feeds and scripts may be provided to the captioning facility, making stenography unavoidable. Other bulletins may be pre-recorded just before going to air, making pre-prepared text preferable.


title: Subtitles

text: News captioning applications currently available are designed to accept text from a variety of inputs: stenography, Velotype, QWERTY, ASCII import, and the newsroom computer. This allows one facility to handle a variety of online captioning requirements and to ensure that captioners properly caption all programs.


title: Subtitles

text: Current affairs programs usually require stenographic assistance. Even though the segments which comprise a current affairs program may be produced in advance, they are usually done so just before on-air time and their duration makes QWERTY input of text unfeasible.


title: Subtitles

text: News bulletins, on the other hand, can often be captioned without stenographic input (unless there are live crosses or ad-libbing by the presenters). This is because:


title: Subtitles

text: For non-live, or pre-recorded programs, television program providers can choose offline captioning. Captioners gear offline captioning toward the high-end television industry, providing highly customized captioning features, such as pop-on style captions, specialized screen placement, speaker identifications, italics, special characters, and sound effects.


title: Subtitles

text: Offline captioning involves a five-step design and editing process, and does much more than simply display the text of a program. Offline captioning helps the viewer follow a story line, become aware of mood and feeling, and allows them to fully enjoy the entire viewing experience. Offline captioning is the preferred presentation style for entertainment-type programming.


title: Subtitles

text: Subtitles for the deaf or hard-of-hearing (SDH) is an American term introduced by the DVD industry. It refers to regular subtitles in the original language where important non-dialogue information has been added, as well as speaker identification, which may be useful when the viewer cannot otherwise visually tell who is saying what.


title: Subtitles

text: The only significant difference for the user between SDH subtitles and closed captions is their appearance: SDH subtitles usually are displayed with the same proportional font used for the translation subtitles on the DVD; however, closed captions are displayed as white text on a black band, which blocks a large portion of the view. Closed captioning is falling out of favor as many users have no difficulty reading SDH subtitles, which are text with contrast outline. In addition, DVD subtitles can specify many colors on the same character: primary, outline, shadow, and background. This allows subtitlers to display subtitles on a usually translucent band for easier reading; however, this is rare, since most subtitles use an outline and shadow instead, in order to block a smaller portion of the picture. Closed captions may still supersede DVD subtitles, since many SDH subtitles present all of the text centered (an example of this is DVDs and Blu-ray Discs manufactured by Warner Bros.), while closed captions usually specify position on the screen: centered, left align, right align, top, etc. This is helpful for speaker identification and overlapping conversation. Some SDH subtitles (such as the subtitles of newer Universal Studios DVDs/Blu-ray Discs and most 20th Century Fox Blu-ray Discs, and some Columbia Pictures DVDs) do have positioning, but it is not as common.


title: Subtitles

text: DVDs for the U.S. market now sometimes have three forms of English subtitles: SDH subtitles; English subtitles, helpful for viewers who may not be hearing impaired but whose first language may not be English (although they are usually an exact transcript and not simplified); and closed caption data that is decoded by the end-user's closed caption decoder. Most anime releases in the U.S. only include translations of the original material as subtitles; therefore, SDH subtitles of English dubs ("dubtitles") are uncommon.


title: Subtitles

text: High-definition disc media (HD DVD, Blu-ray Disc) uses SDH subtitles as the sole method because technical specifications do not require HD to support line 21 closed captions. Some Blu-ray Discs, however, are said to carry a closed caption stream that only displays through standard-definition connections. Many HDTVs allow the end-user to customize the captions, including the ability to remove the black band.


title: Subtitles

text: Song lyrics are not always captioned, as additional copyright permissions may be required to reproduce the lyrics on-screen as part of the subtitle track. In October 2015, major studios and Netflix were sued over this practice, citing claims of false advertising (as the work is henceforth not completely subtitled) and civil rights violations (under California's Unruh Civil Rights Act, guaranteeing equal rights for people with disabilities). Judge Stephen Victor Wilson dismissed the suit in September 2016, ruling that allegations of civil rights violations did not present evidence of intentional discrimination against viewers with disabilities, and that allegations over misrepresenting the extent of subtitles "fall far short of demonstrating that reasonable consumers would actually be deceived as to the amount of subtitled content provided, as there are no representations whatsoever that all song lyrics would be captioned, or even that the content would be 'fully' captioned."


title: Subtitles

text: Although same-language subtitles and captions are produced primarily with the deaf and hard-of-hearing in mind, they may also be used to ensure understanding of dialogue (such as those spoken quietly or mixed in with sound effects, by those with accents unfamiliar to the intended audience, or supportive dialogue from background or off-screen characters). Jason Kehe of "Wired" noted that habitual use of subtitles by the non-deaf has been a growing trend for these reasons, and to help pick up on additional details and information found within dialogue. He drew comparisons to the ubiquity of search engines by stating that "just like Google, closed captions are there, eminently accessible, ready to clarify the unclarities, and so, desperately, we, the paranoids and obsessive-compulsives and postmodern completists, click." Studies (including those by the University of Nottingham and the What Works Clearinghouse of the United States Department of Education) have found that use of subtitles can help promote reading comprehension in school-aged children.


title: Subtitles

text: In some Asian television programming, captioning is considered a part of the genre, and has evolved beyond simply capturing what is being said. The captions are used artistically; it is common to see the words appear one by one as they are spoken, in a multitude of fonts, colors, and sizes that capture the spirit of what is being said. Languages like Japanese also have a rich vocabulary of onomatopoeia which is used in captioning.


title: Subtitles

text: In some East Asian countries, especially Chinese-speaking ones, subtitling is common in all taped television programs. In these countries, written text remains mostly uniform while regional dialects in the spoken form can be mutually unintelligible. Therefore, subtitling offers a distinct advantage to aid comprehension. With subtitles, programs in Standard Mandarin or any dialect can be understood by viewers unfamiliar with it.


title: Subtitles

text: On-screen subtitles as seen in Japanese variety television shows are more for decorative purpose, something that is not seen in television in Europe and the Americas. Some shows even place sound effects over those subtitles. This practice of subtitling has been spread to neighbouring countries including South Korea and Taiwan. ATV in Hong Kong once practiced this style of decorative subtitles on its variety shows when it was owned by Want Want Holdings in Taiwan (which also owns CTV and CTI).


title: Subtitles

text: In India, same language subtitling (SLS) is common for films and music videos. SLS refers to the idea of subtitling in the same language as the audio. SLS is highlighted karaoke style, that is, to speech. The idea of SLS was initiated to shore up literacy rates as SLS makes reading practice an incidental, automatic, and subconscious part of popular TV entertainment. This idea was well received by the Government of India which now uses SLS on several national channels, including Doordarshan.


title: Subtitles

text: Translation basically means conversion of one language into another language in written or spoken form. Subtitles can be used to translate dialogue from a foreign language into the native language of the audience. It is not only the quickest and cheapest method of translating content, but is also usually preferred as it is possible for the audience to hear the original dialogue and voices of the actors.


title: Subtitles

text: Subtitle translation can be different from the translation of written text. Usually, during the process of creating subtitles for a film or television program, the picture and each sentence of the audio are analyzed by the subtitle translator; also, the subtitle translator may or may not have access to a written transcript of the dialogue. Especially in the field of commercial subtitles, the subtitle translator often interprets what is meant, rather than translating the manner in which the dialogue is stated; that is, the meaning is more important than the form—the audience does not always appreciate this, as it can be frustrating for people who are familiar with some of the spoken language; spoken language may contain verbal padding or culturally implied meanings that cannot be conveyed in the written subtitles. Also, the subtitle translator may also condense the dialogue to achieve an acceptable reading speed, whereby purpose is more important than form.


title: Subtitles

text: Especially in fansubs, the subtitle translator may translate both form and meaning. The subtitle translator may also choose to display a note in the subtitles, usually in parentheses ("(" and ")"), or as a separate block of on-screen text—this allows the subtitle translator to preserve form and achieve an acceptable reading speed; that is, the subtitle translator may leave a note on the screen, even after the character has finished speaking, to both preserve form and facilitate understanding. For example, Japanese has multiple first-person pronouns (see Japanese pronouns) and each pronoun is associated with a different degree of politeness. In order to compensate during the English translation process, the subtitle translator may reformulate the sentence, add appropriate words and/or use notes.


title: Subtitles

text: Real-time translation subtitling usually involves an interpreter and a stenographer working concurrently, whereby the former quickly translates the dialogue while the latter types; this form of subtitling is rare. The unavoidable delay, typing errors, lack of editing, and high cost mean that real-time translation subtitling is in low demand. Allowing the interpreter to directly speak to the viewers is usually both cheaper and quicker; however, the translation is not accessible to people who are deaf and hard-of-hearing.


title: Subtitles

text: Some subtitlers purposely provide edited subtitles or captions to match the needs of their audience, for learners of the spoken dialogue as a second or foreign language, visual learners, beginning readers who are deaf or hard of hearing and for people with learning and/or mental disabilities. For example, for many of its films and television programs, PBS displays standard captions representing speech from the program audio, word-for-word, if the viewer selects "CC1" by using the television remote control or on-screen menu; however, they also provide edited captions to present simplified sentences at a slower rate, if the viewer selects "CC2". Programs with a diverse audience also often have captions in another language. This is common with popular Latin American soap operas in Spanish. Since CC1 and CC2 share bandwidth, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recommends translation subtitles be placed in CC3. CC4, which shares bandwidth with CC3, is also available, but programs seldom use it.


title: Subtitles

text: The two alternative methods of 'translating' films in a foreign language are dubbing, in which other actors record over the voices of the original actors in a different language, and lectoring, a form of voice-over for fictional material where a narrator tells the audience what the actors are saying while their voices can be heard in the background. Lectoring is common for television in Russia, Poland, and a few other East European countries, while cinemas in these countries commonly show films dubbed or subtitled.


title: Subtitles

text: The preference for dubbing or subtitling in various countries is largely based on decisions made in the late 1920s and early 1930s. With the arrival of sound film, the film importers in Germany, Italy, France and Spain decided to dub the foreign voices, while the rest of Europe elected to display the dialogue as translated subtitles. The choice was largely due to financial reasons (subtitling is more economical and quicker than dubbing), but during the 1930s it also became a political preference in Germany, Italy and Spain; an expedient form of censorship that ensured that foreign views and ideas could be stopped from reaching the local audience, as dubbing makes it possible to create a dialogue which is totally different from the original. In larger German cities a few "special cinemas" use subtitling instead of dubbing.


title: Subtitles

text: Dubbing is still the norm and favored form in these four countries, but the proportion of subtitling is slowly growing, mainly to save cost and turnaround-time, but also due to a growing acceptance among younger generations, who are better readers and increasingly have a basic knowledge of English (the dominant language in film and TV) and thus prefer to hear the original dialogue.


title: Subtitles

text: Nevertheless, in Spain, for example, only public TV channels show subtitled foreign films, usually at late night. It is extremely rare that any Spanish TV channel shows subtitled versions of TV programs, series or documentaries. With the advent of digital land broadcast TV, it has become common practice in Spain to provide optional audio and subtitle streams that allow watching dubbed programs with the original audio and subtitles. In addition, only a small proportion of cinemas show subtitled films. Films with dialogue in Galician, Catalan or Basque are always dubbed, not subtitled, when they are shown in the rest of the country. Some non-Spanish-speaking TV stations subtitle interviews in Spanish; others do not.


title: Subtitles

text: In many Latin American countries, local network television will show dubbed versions of English-language programs and movies, while cable stations (often international) more commonly broadcast subtitled material. Preference for subtitles or dubbing varies according to individual taste and reading ability, and theaters may order two prints of the most popular films, allowing moviegoers to choose between dubbing or subtitles. Animation and children's programming, however, is nearly universally dubbed, as in other regions.


title: Subtitles

text: Since the introduction of the DVD and, later, the Blu-ray Disc, some high budget films include the simultaneous option of "both" subtitles and/or dubbing. Often in such cases, the translations are made separately, rather than the subtitles being a verbatim transcript of the dubbed scenes of the film. While this allows for the smoothest possible flow of the subtitles, it can be frustrating for someone attempting to learn a foreign language.


title: Subtitles

text: In the traditional subtitling countries, dubbing is generally regarded as something strange and unnatural and is only used for animated films and TV programs intended for pre-school children. As animated films are "dubbed" even in their original language and ambient noise and effects are usually recorded on a separate sound track, dubbing a low quality production into a second language produces little or no noticeable effect on the viewing experience. In dubbed live-action television or film, however, viewers are often distracted by the fact that the audio does not match the actors' lip movements. Furthermore, the dubbed voices may seem detached, inappropriate for the character, or overly expressive, and some ambient sounds may not be transferred to the dubbed track, creating a less enjoyable viewing experience.


title: Subtitles

text: In several countries or regions nearly all foreign language TV programs are subtitled, instead of dubbed, notably in:


title: Subtitles

text: It is also common that television services in minority languages subtitle their programs in the dominant language as well. Examples include the Welsh S4C and Irish TG4 who subtitle in English and the Swedish Yle Fem in Finland who subtitle in the majority language Finnish.


title: Subtitles

text: In Wallonia (Belgium) films are usually dubbed, but sometimes they are played on two channels at the same time: one dubbed (on La Une) and the other subtitled (on La Deux), but this is no longer done as frequently due to low ratings.


title: Subtitles

text: Subtitles exist in two forms; open subtitles are 'open to all' and cannot be turned off by the viewer; closed subtitles are designed for a certain group of viewers, and can usually be turned on/off or selected by the viewer – examples being teletext pages, U.S. Closed captions (608/708), DVB Bitmap subtitles, DVD/Blu-ray subtitles.


title: Subtitles

text: In other categorization, digital video subtitles are sometimes called internal, if they are embedded in a single video file container along with video and audio streams, and external if they are distributed as separate file (that is less convenient, but it is easier to edit/change such file).


title: Subtitles

text: Subtitles created for TV broadcast are stored in a variety of file formats. The majority of these formats are proprietary to the vendors of subtitle insertion systems.


title: Subtitles

text: Broadcast subtitle formats include: .ESY, .XIF, .X32, .PAC, .RAC, .CHK, .AYA, .890, .CIP, .CAP, .ULT, .USF, .CIN, .L32, .ST4, .ST7, .TIT, .STL


title: Subtitles

text: The EBU format defined by Technical Reference 3264-E is an 'open' format intended for subtitle exchange between broadcasters. Files in this format have the extension .stl (not to be mixed up with text "Spruce subtitle format" mentioned above, which also has extension .stl)


title: Subtitles

text: The Timed Text format currently a "Candidate Recommendation" of the W3C (called DFXP) is also proposed as an 'open' format for subtitle exchange and distribution to media players, such as Microsoft Silverlight.


title: Subtitles

text: Most times a foreign language is spoken in film, subtitles are used to translate the dialogue for the viewer. However, there are occasions when foreign dialogue is left unsubtitled (and thus incomprehensible to most of the target audience). This is often done if the movie is seen predominantly from the viewpoint of a particular character who does not speak the language. Such absence of subtitles allows the audience to feel a similar sense of incomprehension and alienation that the character feels. An example of this is seen in "Not Without My Daughter". The Persian dialogue spoken by the Iranian characters is not subtitled because the main character Betty Mahmoody does not speak Persian and the audience is seeing the film from her viewpoint.


title: Subtitles

text: A variation of this was used in the video game "Max Payne 3". Subtitles are used on both the English and Portuguese dialogues, but the latter is left untranslated as the main character does not understand the language.


title: Subtitles

text: One unintentional source of humor in subtitles comes from illegal DVDs produced in non-English-speaking countries (especially China). These DVDs often contain poorly worded subtitle tracks, possibly produced by machine translation, with humorous results. One of the better-known examples is a copy of "" whose opening title was subtitled, "Star war: The backstroke of the west".


title: Viola Desmond

text: Viola Irene Desmond (July 6, 1914 – February 7, 1965) was a Canadian civil and women's rights activist and businesswoman of Black Nova Scotian descent. In 1946, she challenged racial segregation at a cinema in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia by refusing to leave a whites-only area of the Roseland Theatre. For this, she was convicted of a minor tax violation for the one-cent tax difference between the seat that she had paid for and the seat that she used, which was more expensive. Desmond's case is one of the most publicized incidents of racial discrimination in Canadian history and helped start the modern civil rights movement in Canada.


title: Viola Desmond

text: In 2010, Desmond was granted a posthumous free pardon, the first to be granted in Canada. A free pardon deems the person granted the pardon to have never committed the offence and cancels any consequence resulting from the conviction, such as fines, prohibitions or forfeitures. However, it was not until 2021 that the government repaid the $26 fine to her estate in the form of a $1,000 scholarship that adjusted the amount to reflect the time value of money. The Crown-in-Right-of-Nova Scotia also apologized for prosecuting her for tax evasion and acknowledged she was rightfully resisting racial discrimination. In 2016, the Bank of Canada inaccurately announced that Desmond would be the first Canadian woman to be featured on the front of a Canadian banknote, but that honour went to Agnes Macphail, who appeared along with three men on a small print run commemorative note issued in 2017 to mark the 150th anniversary of Confederation.


title: Viola Desmond

text: In late 2018, Desmond became the first Canadian woman to appear alone on a Canadian bank note—a $10 bill which was unveiled by Finance Minister Bill Morneau and Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz during a ceremony at the Halifax Central Library on March 8, 2018. Desmond was also named a National Historic Person in 2018.


title: Viola Desmond

text: Viola Desmond was born on July 6, 1914, one of ten children of James Albert and Gwendolin Irene (née Johnson) Davis. Viola was raised by her father and mother in Halifax. Viola's father worked as a stevedore for number of years before he became a barber.


title: Viola Desmond

text: Growing up Desmond noted the absence of professional hair and skin-care products for black women and set her sights on addressing this need. Being of African descent, she was not allowed to train to become a beautician in Halifax, so she left and received beautician training in Montreal, Atlantic City, and one of Madam C. J. Walker's beauty schools in New York. Upon finishing her training, Desmond returned to Halifax to start her own hair salon called Vi's Studio of Beauty Culture. Her clients included Portia White and Gwen Jenkins, later the first black nurse in Nova Scotia.


title: Viola Desmond

text: In addition to the salon, Desmond opened The Desmond School of Beauty Culture so that black women would not have to travel as far as she had to receive proper training. Catering to women from Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Quebec, the school operated using a vertical integration framework. Students were provided with the skills required to open their own businesses and provide jobs for other black women within their communities. Each year as many as fifteen women graduated from the school, all of whom had been denied admission to whites-only training schools. Desmond also started her own line of beauty products, "Vi's Beauty Products", which she marketed and sold herself.


title: Viola Desmond

text: Viola Desmond joined her husband Jack Desmond in a combined barbershop and hairdressing salon on Street. On November 8, 1946 while on a business trip to Sydney to sell her beauty products, Viola Desmond's car broke down in New Glasgow. She was told that she would have to wait a day before the parts to fix it became available. To pass the time while waiting, she went to see "The Dark Mirror" starring Olivia de Havilland at the Roseland Film Theatre.


title: Viola Desmond

text: There were no segregation laws for movie theatres in Nova Scotia, and the theatre had no sign telling its patrons about the policy, but main floor seats were reserved for white patrons, a discriminatory practice permitted in all Canadian provinces. Desmond was sold a ticket to the balcony. Unaware of the segregation and, being nearsighted, she went to sit in the floor section to be close to the screen. When she was asked to move, she realized what was happening, and refused to move because she had a better view from the main floor. When she requested to exchange her balcony ticket to the main floor for an additional cost, she was refused and forcefully removed from the theatre which caused an injury to her hip. She was also arrested and spent 12 hours in jail, and had to pay a $26 fine for tax evasion. The tax on the balcony price of 30 cents was two cents; the tax on the floor price of 40 cents was three cents. She was convicted of depriving the government of one cent in tax. Desmond was kept in jail overnight and was never informed about her right to legal advice, a lawyer, or bail.


title: Viola Desmond

text: Upon returning to Halifax, Desmond discussed the matter with her husband, and his advice was to let it go. However, she then sought advice from the leaders of her church, the Cornwallis Street Baptist Church, where the Minister William Pearly Oliver and his wife Pearline encouraged her to take action. With their support, Desmond decided to fight the charge in court.


title: Viola Desmond

text: Following the decision to fight the charge, Carrie Best broke the story of Desmond in the first edition of "The Clarion", the first black-owned and published Nova Scotia newspaper. Best closely covered the story of Desmond on front page as she had herself previously confronted the racial segregation of the Roseland Theatre.


title: Viola Desmond

text: With the help of her church and the Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NSAACP), Desmond hired a lawyer, Frederick William Bissett, who represented her in the criminal trials and attempted, unsuccessfully, to file a lawsuit against the Roseland Theatre.


title: Viola Desmond

text: During subsequent trials the government insisted on arguing that this was a case of tax evasion. A provincial act regulating cinemas and movie theatres required the payment of an amusement tax based on the price of the theatre ticket. Since the theatre would only agree to sell Desmond a cheaper balcony ticket, but she had insisted upon sitting in the much more expensive main floor seat, she was only one cent short on tax. The statute used to convict Desmond contained no explicitly racist or discriminatory language.


title: Viola Desmond

text: Bissett's decision to opt for a judicial review rather than appeal the original conviction proved disastrous. Desmond's lawyer tried to appeal the decision on the basis of her being wrongfully accused of tax evasion, not on the basis of racial discrimination. When dismissing the case, Justice William Lorimer Hall said:


title: Viola Desmond

text: Her lawyer, Bissett, refused to bill Desmond and the money was used to support William Pearly Oliver's newly established NSAACP.


title: Viola Desmond

text: After the trial and encounter with the legal system of Nova Scotia, her marriage ended. Desmond closed her business and moved to Montreal where she could enroll in a business college. She eventually settled in New York City, where she died from gastrointestinal bleeding on February 7, 1965, at the age of 50. She is buried at Camp Hill Cemetery in Halifax, Nova Scotia.


title: Viola Desmond

text: Desmond is often compared to Rosa Parks, given they both challenged racism by refusing to vacate seats in "Whites Only" sections and contributed to the rise of the Civil Rights Movement. Despite Nova Scotia and other Canadian provinces having Jim Crow laws, for instance in education, there was no law specifically enforcing segregation in theatres.


title: Viola Desmond

text: On 28 January 2019, Temma Frecker, a Nova Scotia teacher at The Booker School, was awarded the Governor General's History Award for her class' proposal to build a statue of Desmond in Cornwallis Park. Her proposal was to include the existing Edward Cornwallis statue among three other statues of Acadian Noël Doiron, Black Nova Scotian Viola Desmond and Mi'kmaq Chief John Denny Jr. The four statutes would be positioned as if in a conversation with each other, discussing their accomplishments and struggles.


title: Viola Desmond

text: Cape Breton University established a scholarship campaign in the names of Viola Desmond and her sister Wanda Robson, and named a Chair in Social Justice after Desmond.


title: Viola Desmond

text: In 2010, Mayann E. Francis Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia unveiled a portrait of Desmond which is on permanent display in the Ballroom at Government House (Nova Scotia).


title: Viola Desmond

text: On December 8, 2016, Viola Desmond was chosen as the first Canadian woman to appear on her own on the Canadian ten-dollar note after being on a shortlist of five. Viola was first black person and a non royal to feature on $10 bill. On November 26, 2018, the Bank of Canada released a new design of the $10 bill, celebrating Viola Desmond's achievements in the civil rights movement. The back of Canadian-ten-dollar note featured a map of Halifax historic north end along with Canadian museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg. While Agnes Macphail appeared on a note in 2017 with three men, Desmond was the first non-royal woman to appear alone on a regularly circulated note.


title: Viola Desmond

text: In June 2018, at the request of a local city councillor, Scarborough community council approved the renaming of Hupfield Park as Viola Desmond Park. The park is located in the Malvern neighbourhood of Scarborough within Toronto


title: Viola Desmond

text: In July 2018, a short stretch of Forbes Street in New Glasgow outside of the former Roseland Theatre was renamed Viola's Way.


title: Viola Desmond

text: In February 2019, Royal Canadian Mint announced the release of first Black History Month coin, a pure silver coin featuring Viola Desmond.


title: Viola Desmond

text: In April 2019, the International Bank Note Society (IBNS) selected Canadian ten-dollar note featuring Viola Desmond to receive Bank Note of the Year Award for 2018.


title: Viola Desmond

text: In April 2021, the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board announced a new elementary school named after Desmond. The Viola Desmond Elementary School educates 682 students in kindergarten through to Grade 8 and opened in September 2021.


title: Viola Desmond

text: In November 2022, the Toronto International Film Festival announced that the largest screening room at the TIFF Bell Lightbox will be named the Viola Desmond Theatre in 2023.


title: Viola Desmond

text: In 2000, Desmond and other Canadian civil rights activists were the subject of a National Film Board of Canada documentary "Journey to Justice". A documentary film was made about her, entitled "Long Road to Justice: The Viola Desmond Story".


title: Viola Desmond

text: Her sister, Wanda Robson (1926-2022), wrote a book about activism in her family and her experiences with her sister, titled "Sister to Courage." Desmond was also the subject of a children's book "Viola Desmond Won't Be Budged" by Jody Nyasha Warner.


title: Viola Desmond

text: On February 2, 2016, Historica Canada featured Desmond in a Heritage Minute, filmed in High River, Alberta, in June 2015. The video features Kandyse McClure as Viola Desmond. She became the first historical woman of colour to feature in a Heritage Minute.


title: Viola Desmond

text: Google's July 6, 2018 Doodle, created by Google artist Sophie Diao, celebrates the life and legacy of Viola Desmond, and was distributed across Canada.


title: Viola Desmond

text: Desmond's life and broader issues of racial discrimination in Canada are the subject of a play developed by Toronto playwright Andrea Scott. "Controlled Damage" was produced by Halifax's Neptune Theatre in association with b current productions of Toronto. The play premiered at Neptune on 4 February 2020 with Halifax actress Deborah Castrilli in the role of Viola Desmond.


title: Viola Desmond

text: On April 14, 2010, the Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia, Mayann Francis, on the advice of Premier Darrell Dexter, invoked the Royal Prerogative and granted Desmond a posthumous free pardon, the first to be granted in Canada. The free pardon, an extraordinary remedy granted under the Royal Prerogative of Mercy only in the rarest of circumstances and the first one granted posthumously, differs from a simple pardon in that it is based on innocence and recognizes that a conviction was in error. Francis, herself a Black Canadian, remarked: "Here I am, 64 years later – a black woman giving freedom to another black woman", about her signing of the pardon.


title: Viola Desmond

text: The Government of Nova Scotia also apologized. Desmond's younger sister Wanda Robson and Graham Reynolds, a professor of Cape Breton University, worked with the Government of Nova Scotia to ensure that Desmond's name was cleared, there was a public acknowledgement of the injustice and Nova Scotia reaffirmed its commitment to Human Rights. The provincial government declared the first Nova Scotia Heritage Day in her honour in February 2015. Desmond's portrait also hangs in Government House in Halifax, Nova Scotia.


title: Viola Desmond

text: In 2021, prompted by a request from Ontario high school student Varishini Deochand, the Government of Nova Scotia offered a symbolic repayment of Desmond's original court fees to her only surviving family member, Robson. When Robson said she would use the money to make a one-time donation for a scholarship at Cape Breton University, the Province increased the repayment from the current valuation of $368.29 to $1,000. The province also issued a commemorative cheque to display in its legislature. Original court costs were $26.