5 Great LGBTQ+ Films To Watch This Pride Month
Celebrate Pride Month with these amazing LGBTQ+ documentaries and films that will educate and inspire you!
Pride Month might be looking a little different this year, but we’re still ready to learn about and celebrate the lives of some of the most prominent and inspirational activists who have helped shape the LGBTQ+ community!
Here are 5 awesome LGBTQ+ films to put on your watch list this month!
THE DEATH AND LIFE OF MARSHA P. JOHNSON
LGBT+ rights activist Victoria Cruz investigates the mysterious death of black gay rights activist and Stonewall veteran, Marsha P. Johnson, who was a central figure in the Stonewall Riots.
Her body was found in the Hudson river shortly after Gay Pride in 1992 and the NYPD chalked it up as a suicide and refused to investigate.
Johnson and fellow trans icon Sylvia Rivera formed the world's first trans-rights organization, STAR (Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries) all while battling challenges such as homelessness, illness and alcoholism. Marsha and Sylvia ignited a powerful and lasting civil rights movement for gender nonconforming people.
The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson works to tell the story of Marsha's life and get to the bottom of Marsha's death.
SYLVIA RIVERA TRANS MOVEMENT FOUNDER
Sylvia Rivera was a Latina American gay liberation and transgender rights activist, prominent as an activist and community worker in New York.
As co-founder of the Gay Liberation Front, Rivera was known for being a part of the Stonewall Riots and establishing the political organization STAR (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries) with fellow friend and drag queen, Marsha P. Johnson.
BEFORE STONEWALL: THE MAKING OF A GAY AND LESBIAN COMMUNITY
Before Stonewall: The Making of a Gay and Lesbian Community, is a documentary filmed in 1984 by director Greta Schiller. It focuses on the gay club scene of the early to mid 1900s before the Stonewall Riots.
The film was restored in 2019 for the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots and tells the story of LGBTQ history from the early 20th century to 1969’s birth of the modern gay rights movement.
PARIS IS BURNING
This documentary focuses on drag queens living in New York City in the 80s and their house culture, which provides a sense of community and support for queens. Following African American and Hispanic gay men, drag queens and transgender women, these houses serve as surrogate families and social groups for a predominantly youthful community largely ostracised from mainstream society.
VITO
On June 27, 1969 a police raid on a Greenwich Village gay bar, Stonewall took a turn when people decided to fight back. As a riot erupted, a new era in the Gay Rights Movement was born. Vito Russo was among the crowd. Over the next twenty years until his death from AIDS in 1990, Vito would go on to become one of the most outspoken and inspiring activists in the GLBT community's fight for equal rights!
Vito, tells the story story of Vito Russo, founding father of the gay liberation movement, author of "The Celluloid Closet," and vociferous AIDS activist in the 1980s.