'Stonewall Uprising' revisits pivotal queer riots

Think you know the story of the Stonewall riots, arguably the most important moment in the modern LGBT rights movement? According to Kate Davis and David Heilbroner, co-directors of the brand-new documentary Stonewall Uprising, odds are that you really don't.

Shortly after the filmmakers were approached to direct the film, which tells the story of the multi-day uprising that began in The Stonewall Inn (a Greenwich Village dive) in 1969, they realized they were treading on some surprisingly uncharted ground. As it turned out, no other filmmaker had told the story of the event that changed the landscape of LGBT rights in America in a detailed, documentary style.

The result, told through the words of protesters, reporters and even one police officer who were there at Stonewall, is now touring the country in a series of screenings, including a run at Chicago's Music Box Theatre Friday, Aug. 6, 2010 through Thursday, Aug. 12, 2010.

EDGE recently spoke with Davis for insight into the film and what she hopes audiences will take away from her queer history lesson.

An emotional reaction

EDGE: The documentary debuted in June. How has the reception to the film been? Has anything surprised you from that reaction?

Kate Davis: The reception has been good. What we've noticed is that audiences get very emotional, and that's surprising in a really good way. I think it means a lot to people to be able to see the story told as it unfolds by the people who were there as gay people were just beginning to believe they have a voice in the world. It's a moment not so long ago that's really pivotal.

We've found people tend to know very little about the several nights of rioting, so it's been fun to see audiences and critics discover the twists and turns of the riots' thematic narrative. A lot of people, not just the youth but all ages, kind of didn't realize how repressive a time the '50s and '60s was in America. People tend to be really shocked by that. And there's more laughter than I expected there would be.

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Anti-gay propoganda

EDGE: What is it that people are finding humorous in the documentary? I'd imagine some of the anti-gay propaganda-styled films and the Mike Wallace CBS News piece - titled "The Homosexuals" - are both shocking and funny, in a way, for their outrageousness.

KD: I think that dark side of American culture is one of the things the film brought to life that we didn't expect so much. Gay people were lobotomized and thought of as mentally ill and deserving of being jailed at that time. We didn't expect that to be part of the story, but it became increasingly important to include. The only real way you can understand Stonewall is to understand the time and society.

Mike Wallace is pretty ashamed of that piece now, and some audience members come away enraged at him, but that was the sense of thinking at the time. Nobody thought differently. So it's interesting people can laugh at that or the shock therapy footage. Some of the PSAs are a little corny, but I think the real laughter comes in part because we've changed so much and can look at it through that distance of time. You can't help but mix the laughter with outrage, however.

EDGE: Many of the film's reviews point to your careful selection of interview subjects as one of the documentary's biggest plusses. How did you get in touch with some of these folks, particularly Seymour Pine, one of the police officers who led the bar raid?

KD: We were helped enormously by David Carter, who wrote the book Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution. The film was loosely based on his research and he was our link to many of the people we interviewed. He had spent 10 years writing the book and interviewing dozens of people, including Pine, the only policeman from the riots we could find. He was in his 90s and wheeled him in in a wheelchair, so we were lucky to speak him. I remember feeling like we were memorializing time with some of these elderly voices who might not have otherwise been able to tell their story to the world. I felt we were preserving their side of the story.

EDGE: I understand you were originally a bit hesitant about taking on this project. Why was that? Was this sense of urgency in telling the story of people like Pine part of what changed that for you?

KD: When I was approached to do this film, my gut reaction was that this must have been done a dozen times already. I thought it was a story people knew and some people do have that reaction still. But Stonewall hasn't been addressed in a documentary film form. We did a lot of research and have yet to find another film that really tells the story. So that it had never been done was what really excited me.

Also, after reading Carter's book, I discovered it's a really exciting story filled with a lot of ironies. For example, there was a broad range of rioters. It wasn't only queens and street youth, but it was people coming from all over by that final night: Straight people, the Black Panthers ... The Village Voice reporter we spoke with said it should be called an uprising because it was an unleashing of political feeling that was destined to explode. It just happened to happen that week. Decades of oppression fueled that fire.

EDGE: This film is not your first foray into queer documentaries. You also directed Southern Comfort, the Emmy-nominated 2001 film focused on transman Robert Eads' struggle with cancer. How did this experience compare to that one?

KD: Obviously, Southern Comfort was a very personal and intimate film, using a different kind of storytelling. Since this is history, you can say it's a bit less personally involving, but on the other hand, as with that film, I felt I was meeting people who were really passionate and willing to stand up for what they believe in. Survivors, in a way, in the face of a lot of prejudice. I grew very fond very quickly of the people in the film and admired their courage.

I would say, also, that the Stonewall story felt like the root story or the gateway that made a film like Southern Comfort possible. All these people in the LGBT community could come out over the course of the next 40 years because something like Stonewall happened. It shifted our culture's view of gay people, humanized them and gave them a voice in the '60s. Thirty years later, Robert and Laura and the other people in the film were brave enough to tell their stories because some people fought before them and paved away. I definitely felt there was a connection.

Parallels to the civil rights movement

EDGE: Speaking of drawing connections, one commenter on the New York Times review was a history teacher who felt the film drew parallels, for her, between the African-American civil rights movement and the gay liberation movement. What are your thoughts on that reaction?

KD: I think Stonewall was an extension of the civil rights movement. A branch that grew out of the civil rights movement. There were all these oppressed groups fighting at that time before Stonewall happened and it definitely emboldened people who were now being told they couldn't be served a drink legally. They were looking around, attending other groups' rallies and seeing anti-war demonstrations, black people fighting and rioting and women's lib as another burgeoning force. I don't think the riots could have happened 10 years earlier. It required the anti-establishment radicalism in the Zeitgeist to inspire that sort of courage. So, as Martin Boyce says at the end of the film, Stonewall was another chapter in the great story of human rights. I think that kind of says it all.

EDGE: What do you hope people will take away from seeing Stonewall Uprising? Who really needs to see this film?

KD: I hope this film can help people from all walks of life - whether they're gay youth or elderly straight people - to see the Stonewall story as a part of American history on par with Rosa Parks or the march in Selma or other civil rights events taught in high school. Why isn't Stonewall? We don't talk about what happened to gay people and we should. I really hope to elevate this story as the beginning of the whole movement that changed this culture.

Forty years later, we have gay politicians and movie stars and gay marriage in the news constantly and yet people still don't know about Stonewall at all. It's about time that this becomes known as part of our national heritage. It's always good to know your own history.

Stonewall Uprising screens Friday, Aug. 6, 2010 throughThursday, Aug. 12, 2010 at the Music Box Theatre, 3733 N. Southport Ave. Visit www.musicboxtheatre.com for tickets or more information. Visit