[3] The film stars John Labow as Doug Harris and Henry Tarvainen as Peter Saarinen, two very different students at the University of Toronto, who develop a complex quasi-romantic friendship, and Joy Tepperman and Janet Amos as their girlfriends Bev and Sandra.

[5] Secter found much of the cast by placing a classified advertisement in the university's student newspaper The Varsity; however, for technical crew he largely had to go to Ryerson Polytechnic's film studies department.

[6] According to Secter, "at the time I made it the very idea of making movies in Canada was an alien concept".

[7] Frank Morriss of The Globe and Mail noticed the "overtones of homosexuality" in Doug and Peter's friendship.

"[8] Writing about the film for The Body Politic in 1982, Thomas Waugh expressed concern about the fact that gay-themed films of its era rarely depicted positive same-sex relationships, but instead usually centred on love triangles involving a woman;[4] while acknowledging that Winter Kept Us Warm reflected this trope, he complimented the film for portraying its women characters with greater integrity than usual for the genre.

In 1976, he directed the low budget sex comedy Getting Together, but subsequently left the film industry.

All four of the main cast members went on to noteworthy careers in arts and media, although only Amos continued to be known principally as an actor; Labow was a documentarian for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and TVOntario, Tarvainen became a noted theatre director, and Tepperman is a writer under the pen name Joy Fielding.

[10] Notable figures who discussed Secter and Winter Kept Us Warm in the documentary included David Cronenberg, Michael Ondaatje, Philip Glass, Ed Mirvish and Lloyd Kaufman.