USA 1984 | Director, Script: Greta Schiller, Robert Rosenberg | Camera: Sandi Sissel, Jan Kraepelin, Cathy Zheutlin | Editor: Bill Daughton | Music: Lori Seligmann, Ray Ramsig | Production: Jezebel Productions | Colour | DCP | 87 min | english OV with german SUB | Salzgeber

The Stonewall riots are generally regarded as the beginning of the queer civil rights movement. On the night of 27-28 June 1969, the police planned to raid the Stonewall Inn in New York. Such raids on "gay bars", in which bar patrons were arrested and charged with "indecent behaviour", and their names made public, were common practice at the time.

When the police entered the Stonewall Inn at around 1.20 a.m., guests resisted. [...] Bottles and stones were thrown, and a brawl broke out on Christopher Street in front of the inn. The officers ultimately had no choice but to retreat into the inn [...]. The protests were not only an outpouring of pent-up anger but a sign of the collective "gay power" of homosexuals and trans people. [...] In the aftermath, many people showed solidarity with the queer community, and an increasing number of organisations emerged in a new civil rights movement. Every year, Gay Pride parades commemorate the uprisings.

The documentary film BEFORE STONEWALL: THE MAKING OF A GAY AND LESBIAN COMMUNITY clearly demonstrates that the movement for the rights of homosexuals and trans people did not emerge with a big bang out of nowhere. Together with Andrea Weiss, director/writer Greta Schiller collected extensive archival material of queer culture and history, which only found a wider audience through her film. (Lea Gronenberg, Filmlöwin, 2019)