Just 20 movie by Windsor filmmaker looks at campus rape

WARNING: The film embedded in this story may be considered graphic and offensive to some viewers.

A Windsor, Ont., filmmaker "infuriated" by the six-month sentence of Brock Turner, the standout Stanford swimmer convicted of sexual assault, has produced a short film in response to the jail term handed down and Turner's father's description of the assault as "20 minutes of action."

Turner, a freshman at Stanford University and U.S. Olympic hopeful, was found guilty of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman.

His father pleaded for leniency in sentencing his son, referring to the crime as "20 minutes of action."

Gavin Michael Booth, who is from Windsor and works in California, took that line by Dan Turner and ran with it, producing a 20-minute film called Just 20.

He called the words an "insult to injury."

"That just infuriated me.," Booth said. "If he looked at what 20 minutes of rape or 20 minutes of sexual assault looked like, he probably would have a very different thought."

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Booth had the idea for a film depicting the college campus rape scene on the way to a writers club. He bounced the idea off his wife, who encouraged him to make the film.

The film shows college kids drinking at a house a party. At about the five-minute mark, one of the male party goers starts coming on to a very drunk girl. Eventually, she passes out and he proceeds to have sex with her.

The camera pans throughout other rooms of the house, showing revellers oblivious to what's going on a room away. The camera always coming back to the living room, where the man is having sex with the now-unconscious woman.

"Just 20 is a hard-hitting, single-take look at what the college campus party and rape scenario looks like. It's an unflinching look at how a lot of these incidents go down," Booth said. "It's not always a mustache-twirling villain committing it. Rape is rape. There should be no lessening of how we phrase it."

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Booth, who specializes in horror films, said he's sometimes "socially justice driven" in his projects.

In the past, he's worked with The Hospice of Windsor and Essex County and Transition to Betterness, too.

Booth said everybody involved in Just 20 "shared my rage."

"Everybody realized it was for a good cause," he said.

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The film was shot on a Monday and released three days later, on a Thursday. It's posted for free on YouTube.

"I don't know how to protest any other way than through media," Booth said. "I think movies and entertainment are one of the biggest influences and can have one of the biggest impacts."

While it's not real footage, Booth still said, "seeing is believing."

"It's always the most eye-opening thing," he said of film.