Cleve Jones is an American AIDS and LGBT rights activist.
He conceived the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, which has become, at 54 tons, the world's largest piece of community folk art as of 2016.
Art Johnston and Pepe Peña are civil rights leaders whose life and love is a force behind LGBTQ+ equality in the heart of the country. Their iconic gay bar, Sidetrack, has helped fuel movements and create community for decades in Chicago's queer enclave. But, behind the business and their historic activism exists a love unlike any other.
A story of the LGBT struggle from the 1960s to the present, after the Stonewall riot sparked the militant action in New York that was to spread around the world. From San Francisco to Paris via Amsterdam, between the first Gay Pride, the election of Harvey Milk, the French "decriminalization", the AIDS epidemic and the first homosexual marriages, these few decades of struggle are embodied through numerous testimonies of actors and actresses of this revolution rainbow.
Documentary exploring The Advocate's role at the forefront of the LGBT movement in the U.S.
Patrick returns to San Francisco for the first time in almost a year to celebrate a momentous event with his old friends. In the process, he must face the unresolved relationships he left behind and make difficult choices about what’s important to him.
Annul Victory is a documentary on the fight for marriage equality and the Proposition 8 election battle. The film documents the roller coaster ride of emotions in California after the historical state Supreme Court decision in May of 2008, finding it unconstitutional to deny gays and lesbians the right to be married in the state, and then the passage of Proposition 8 in November, denying gays and lesbians marriage rights, and “annulling” thousands of marriages. The story is told through the life and experiences of Robin Tyler and Diane Olson, one of the 14 couples involved in the historic litigation, with a look at some of the 18,000 couples who got married during the window of “legality” between May and November, with thought and commentary provided by a host of celebrities.
The true story of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man ever elected to public office. In San Francisco in the late 1970s, Harvey Milk becomes an activist for gay rights and inspires others to join him in his fight for equal rights that should be available to all Americans.
A short film mostly comprised of two sources: research footage from 1988 about the beginnings of the HIV epidemic from the perspective of medical professionals, and an interview with Cleve Jones in 2003 as he looks back upon his activism, and the state of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the early 2000s.
Now known internationally as the world's first "gay hometown," San Francisco's Castro District was a quiet, working-class neighborhood of European immigrants only a few decades ago. In this documentary, the story of the Castro's transformation is told by those who lived it, young and old, straight and gay. It's a tale of social upheaval, exuberant street culture, political assassination, and the inspiring coming-of-age of an entire community an ongoing saga even today.
On the eve of 1987's Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, surviving families and friends of people who have died of AIDS prepare panels to be added to a large-scale memorial quilt project. Drawing from the sea of names memorialized, director Robert Epstein focuses on the lives of six people. Alongside the intimate profiles offered, through news footage and interviews, Epstein puts the AIDS crisis in the larger context of social and government response to the disease.