24th BFI London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival: TMC reviews Stonewall Uprising

by Potato Cake

New York, 1969: It’s the year of Woodstock and political protesting against the Vietnam War is at its height. In the wake of Martin Luther King’s assassination the Black Civil Rights Movement struggles on, and America is awash with social change. June rises, hot and sticky: Mayor Wagner, seeking re-election, orders police to clean up the streets. Down in The Village, the only haunt of New York’s ‘homosexuals’, fear is high.

Branded sexual deviants, homosexuals are medically insane and extremely dangerous. Government warnings are regularly issued, those found guilty are outed in national papers, expelled from the military, government offices and hospitals and banned from practicing law. Homosexuals are arrested, hospitalised without release and even occasionally castrated. Gay people are social outcasts banished to gather in illegal Mafia bars in grotty areas or to cruise parks or the docks’ meat trailers.

Saturday night, June 27th: the Stonewall bar: a popular but particularly seedy mafia-run establishment in The Village is packed. Boot-legged liquor flows from dirty glasses, queens slink and parade by the jukebox and couples slow-dance on the floor. Tensions are high: one week ago, another gay bar was raided not far from here.

Suddenly, the lights come on: a police raid. Panicked customers prepare to run, to be arrested, reported or beaten. Then the strangest thing happens: against all expectation for the first time in history, the underestimated ‘homosexuals’ turn on the police and refuse to leave; a current of rebellion spreading through a people who have never fully united before, but who have had enough.

At Stonewall for the first time, publicly and in large number, gay people fought together as a unit. Led by street kids with nothing to lose, an unlikely collection of resistance formed of ‘fags’ and ‘butches’ and everyone in between. The police had no choice but to retreat and abort. It was a victory for human rights and the beginning of gay liberation.

Stonewall Uprising is a powerful film about humanity and the search for freedom. It is a story of oppression that is universal and it has messages, not only for LGBT people all over the world still living in political climates not far from the one in Sixties USA, but for any people or group who are silenced.

By taking an event with no footage and little photographic evidence, plagued by conflicting witness accounts, the filmmakers of Stonewall Uprising  had a difficult task. Beginning with David Carter’s book on the riots (a result of ten years of research) they rise to the challenge, succeeding first in building a strong picture of the political climate leading up to the event, and then by portraying the riot itself, using rare archive footage and staged action mixed with eye-witness accounts.

The film feels authentic and authoritative, it never bores or becomes confusing in its subject matter and it weaves a difficult story into an exciting and very accessible, vibrant tale. Often witty and playful, it’s a film that pulls you right into sixties America and grabs on to you until you emerge at the end, hopeful and reflective.

Towards the end of the film, one of the eye-witnesses breaks down, recalling how Stonewall was the first moment he didn’t feel alone. It’s a profoundly moving beat that captures the heart of the film: that history is a living chain of reactions by ordinary people, that entire movements are built out of the smallest moments and that when people unite, anything is possible.

Stonewall Uprising, directed by Kate Davis and David Heilbroner is due for release in the US this June, hopefully UK release will follow.