It’s difficult to see the past clearly. In the information age, when we can’t seem to remember what happened last week — let alone last year — the late 1960s and early ’70s feel like ancient history. Given all the privileges we currently enjoy, it is hard to imagine life without them. Which is what makes Kate Davis and David Heilbroner’s Stonewall Uprising (June 24, 7pm Roxie Theater) so vital. The documentary vividly and with great attention to detail sets the stage for the events that unfolded on June 28, 1969 at the Stonewall Inn, a New York dive bar. When police conducted a routine raid on the mafia-run gay bar, the Stonewall’s patrons, a colorful assortment of characters including a number of drag queens and street kids, refused to cooperate, leading to three days of riots in the West Village. This episode was memorialized in an annual event that spread from New York to other urban areas and eventually ballooned into the Gay Pride parade.
But before this act of defiance, Stonewall Uprising reminds us of the harsh reality of gay life in an era when there were still numerous laws on the books prohibiting homosexual conduct across the country. For those old enough to remember the summer of 1969, gay people standing up and fighting for their rights was unthinkable, even in an era roiled by the Civil Rights and Free Speech Movements, Women’s Liberation, La Raza and protests against the Vietnam War.
Homosexuality was classified as a mental illness. Men and women who were deemed sexual outlaws could be locked up in medical institutions and subjected to aversion therapy, electric shock, sterilization, castration and lobotomy. If one was unlucky enough to be swept up in the same kind of raid that was foiled at the Stonewall, one could easily lose one’s job, family and place in society. So even among gays it was considered impossible or foolhardy to even think of standing up for gay rights. Stonewall Uprising — through a deft combination of first-hand accounts and archival footage — is an immersive experience; it feels like stepping into a time machine and traveling back into a foreign past.
This not so distant past, conjured so evocatively by Stonewall Uprising provides context for Frameline’s screening and lecture tribute to Andy Warhol, alongside a documentary about Candy Darling, one of Warhol’s “superstars.” (Warhol screenings: June 18, 7pm and June 19, 9:30pm, Roxie Theater. Lecture: June 19, 4:15pm, Victoria Theatre.) Once again, it’s easy to forget how startling and revolutionary these characters must have been when they hit the scene, even in New York.