Before Stonewall - Schamlos Harmlos - Die Reihe für Queer-, Sex- & Subkultur

Shamelessly Harmless The series for queer, sex & subculture

In cooperation with Kinothek Asta Nielsen followed by a themed discussion

The Stonewall riot is generally regarded as the birth of the queer civil rights movement. On the night of June 27-28, 1969, the police wanted to raid the Stonewall Inn in New York. Such raids on gay bars, in which bar patrons were arrested, charged with offensive behavior and their names made public, were common practice at the time.

When the police entered the Stonewall Inn around 1:20 a.m., the patrons resisted. [...] Bottles and stones were thrown and a brawl broke out on Christopher Street in front of the Inn. In the end, the officers had no choice but to retreat into the Stonewall Inn [...]. The protests were an outpouring of pent-up anger, but also of the collective gay power of homosexuals and trans*people. [...] As a result, many people showed solidarity with the queer community and organizations of a new civil rights movement increasingly emerged. Every year, Christopher Street Day commemorates the uprisings.

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

USA 1984; Director: Greta Schiller, Robert Rosenberg