http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/20100625_Remembering_the__Stonewall_Uprising_.html
By Carrie Rickey
Jun. 25, 2010
It was a time of free love - if you were heterosexual. During the
1960s, Stonewall, a dingy bar in New York's West Village, was about
the only place in Manhattan where gays and lesbians could dance in public.
It was also a time when homosexuality was regarded as a mental
illness. Same-sex intercourse was illegal in 49 of the 50 states.
"Masquerade," a 19th-century statute against dressing in the clothes
of the opposite sex, was likewise punishable by law.
In order to rid the city of the scourge of long-haired men and
short-haired women, police routinely raided gay bars where they would
club and arrest patrons. But typically, before officers paid a call
on (the mob-run) Stonewall, they alerted the owners, who alerted
their customers. But on the night of June 28, 1969, the vice squad
didn't call in advance. And when they came waving nightsticks, the
dancers and drag queens fought back.
Stonewall Uprising is an important documentary - and a passionate and
compassionate reconstruction of the historic standoff between police
and pubcrawlers. Lucian Truscott IV, a journalist who was there,
describes it as "the Rosa Parks moment" that gained momentum for the
nascent gay-pride movement.
Another eyewitness, who remembers being part of civil rights and
peace marches where protesters ran away from the police, says
Stonewall was the first demonstration he was in where the police ran
from the protesters. "Gay people weren't supposed to be threats to
police officers," says another eyewitness, ". . . and here they were
. . . attacking them and beating them."
Among the participants who share their vivid recollections with
filmmakers Kate Davis and David Heilbroner are Seymour Pine, a
retired vice-squad officer who led the raid, and Thomas
Lanigan-Schmidt, an artist who likewise remembers the night. While
they were on opposite sides in 1969, their sympathies are in
remarkable alignment today.
Rich with newsreel footage including the historic 1965 gay march on
Philadelphia's Independence Hall and antihomosexual propaganda of the
1960s, the film gracefully telescopes a lot of information in its
brief running time.
--
Contact movie critic Carrie Rickey at 215-854-5402 or crickey@phillynews.com
.
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