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Rating: NR
Length: 82 minutes Year: 2010 “It was the Rosa Parks moment,” says one man. June 28, 1969: NYC police raid a Greenwich Village Mafia-run gay bar, The Stonewall Inn. For the first time, patrons refuse to be led into paddy wagons, setting off a 3-day riot that launches the Gay Rights Movement. Told by Stonewall patrons, Village Voice reporters and the cop who led the raid, STONEWALL UPRISING compellingly recalls the bad old days when psychoanalysts equated homosexuality with mental illness and advised aversion therapy, and even lobotomies; public service announcements warned youngsters against predatory homosexuals; and police entrapment was rampant. A treasure-trove of archival footage gives life to this all-too-recent reality, a time when Mike Wallace announced on a 1966 CBS Reports: “The average homosexual, if there be such, is promiscuous. He is not interested in, nor capable of, a lasting relationship like that of a heterosexual marriage.” At the height of this oppression, the cops raid Stonewall, triggering nights of pandemonium with tear gas, billy clubs and a small army of tactical police. The rest is history.
Essential...masterful...pitch-perfect! Kate Davis and David Heilbroner's essential new history of the events and repercussions of the Stonewall riots is about as expert a piece of analytic documentary filmmaking as can be conceived. The filmmakers masterfully unpack the cultural mores and revolutionary undercurrents of the '60s that led to the explosive mix of bigotry, passion, fear, and politics that coalesced outside Greenwich Village's Stonewall Inn on June 28, 1969. -- Arthur Ryel-Lindsey, Slant Magazine
A wealth of archive footage and eye-witness interviews. . . I laughed, I cried, I loved it. -- Tim Macavoy, Inside Movies
Stirring...an absolute must-see! You'll swell with gratitude and joy as the pride spreads like wildfire. -- Metrosource Magazine
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