1969 - When Gays First Fought Back Against Police Brutality

This documentary was made shortly after the rebellion/riot that took place in nineteen sixty-nine in New York City at a gay bar called the Stonewall Inn. 16mm documentaries like this one were made by filmmakers from my generation who grabbed a camera and a soundman partner carrying a 25 pound audio rig and went into the streets recording real stories that were in a style completely unfamiliar to the nightly networks news programs we saw in 1969 and 1970. This documentary tried to give a sense of the events that took place after that first night of the rebellion in Greenwich Village New York City. Many consider this rebellion the start of the gay rights movement – the LBGTQ movement. Although I did not film this sequence, those of us who were in streets filming various events were a kind of a underground community and proudly shared our work with one another.