The Gay Youth Corner - Before Stonewall

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Before Stonewall

Saturday, 04 July 2009

The Stonewall riots of June 28, 1969 were the first real turning point for a gay rights movement and signalled a direct call to action for all gay men and women around the world to fight for their place in society. The riots themselves lasted throughout the week and although violent were sparked by years of oppression and contempt towards homosexual individuals. Even today these riots are remembered each year around the world by the numerous Pride events that often fall at the end of June or early in July to ensure that the significance of the Stonewall riots and what preceded is not forgotten. It is the events that built towards that night of June 28 that are the focus of the fascinating documentary Before Stonewall (released on DVD 22nd June). The documentary, through archive interviews and a thorough and brilliantly well researched look into the building tensions in American society throughout the 50s and 60s is a must see for the generations who cannot remember a time when being homosexual was illegal deemed immoral and classified as a mental illness.

Before Stonewall is a multiple Emmy award winning documentary that fuses the dramatic stories from those individuals at the riots with frank and warming anecdotes and memories from a community that only 40 years ago was finally allowed to move closer to society. The documentary is successful for its look not just at the riots themselves but for its observation of decade-by-decade changes and shifts in American culture from the 1920s up until June 28 outside the Stonewall Inn.

Simultaneously heart warming and provocative, Before Stonewall is essential viewing, not only for younger generations of the LGBT community but for all of those minorities that have faced or who still face oppression. Too often, even today, young gay men and women are growing up into a world that is not always friendly or welcoming, Before Stonewall in many ways should be a beacon of support and reassurance that change is possible.

Gay Pride events have a message of fun, celebration and freedom attached to them and are enjoyable for the sense of a community working together to combat wider social issues. However, there is also an important message to all of these global parties, carnivals, demonstrations and marches, that of combating oppression. Watch Before Stonewall in order to see how much has changed and just how much further we all have to go in order to achieve a rightful accepted place as equal citizens.

Before Stonewall is available now on DVD.

Before Stonewall, directed by Greta Schiller (Paris Was a Woman) with cinematography by Sandi Sissel (Tyler Perry’s Meet The Browns, Wes Craven’s The People Under the Stairs), Before Stonewall is narrated by prolific lesbian writer Rita Mae Brown (Rubyfruit Jungle, The Slumber Party Massacre) and features gay poet Allen Ginsberg, lesbian author Ann Bannon, and a cornucopia of gay activists and normal folk telling their stories.