Before Stonewall: The Making of a Gay and Lesbian Community
This event took place Jun 23 - Jun 28, 2019
$12 General Admission
$9 Student/Senior
$7 Member
Greta Schiller & Robert Rosenberg
US
1984
1h 27m
Discussion
** Before Stonewall interviewee Teddy Boutte will introduce the June 28 screening of the film! Read more about Teddy below **
About
** Newly restored for the 50th Anniversary of the Stonewall Riots! **
In 1969 the police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City’s Greenwich Village, leading to three nights of rioting by the city’s gay community. With this outpouring of courage and unity the gay liberation movement had begun.
Before Stonewall pries open the closet door, setting free dramatic stories from the early 1900’s onwards of public and private existence as experienced by LGBT Americans. Revealing and, by turns, humorous and horrifying, this widely acclaimed film relives the emotional and political spark of today’s gay rights movement – the events that led to the fevered riots of 1969 have led in turn to many other milestones in the brave fight for acceptance. Experience the unforgettable, decade-by-decade history of homosexuality in America through eye-opening historical footage and amazing interviews with those who lived through an often brutal closeted history.
Narrated by iconic author Rita Mae Brown and featuring groundbreaking interviews with Ann Bannon, Martin Duberman, Allen Ginsberg, Barbara Gittings, Harry Hay, Mabel Hampton, Dr. Evelyn Hooker, Frank Kameny, Audre Lorde, Richard Bruce Nugent, Jose Sarria, and many more.
Description courtesy of distributor website. Click here for full photo credits.
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“This is a documentary that can tell the sometimes bitter truth and still conclude with an unambiguously heartening flourish.” – Eric Henderson, Slant Magazine
About Teddy Boutte:
Teddy has been out, in rural Louisiana, San Francisco, and Seattle for over 70 years. He lived in the thick of the Gayola scandal in San Francisco and Seattle, the AIDS epidemic of the ’80s. And he’s still alive to talk about it! Ask him about the police payoff system, the gay economy, the sex industry, the drag scene, or any of the other milieus where you could find community and survival before Stonewall, if you were openly gay in the USA.
You can meet Teddy at the June 28th screening of Before Stonewall, when he will introduce the film!