Before Stonewall

A routine police raid turned into three nights of riots in 1969, when regular visitors of the Stonewall Inn in New York decided to take a stand. The hours filled with defiance made history and started the gay liberation movement. Before Stonewall is a documentary that maps the steps leading to the event that became a crucial milestone of queer culture and a symbol of the LGBTQ+ community’s new visibility and demand for rights from politicians and society. The film touches upon many key topics, including the social experiments of the roaring 1920s, the scapegoating of gays during McCarthy’s era, and the development of the early Homophile Movement in the 1950s. Just like the Stonewall riots are a milestone in the fight for equality, the award-winning Before Stonewall made history, as it provided an illuminating and captivating image of the history of queer experience in the USA. It is, therefore, still considered one of the pivotal documentaries about the queer community in the Western world.