STONEWALL

For all its period zing, the issues in Nigel Finch's colorful dramatization of the landmark 1969 Stonewall riots in New York remain as pertinent today as ever. Matty Dean (Fred Weller) arrives in New York, determined to join the gay liberation cause. He becomes involved with a group of drag queens who hang out at the regularly-busted Stonewall Bar, and with a conservative group of homosexual activitists who actively provoke police confrontation. But this confrontation proves hard in the liberal atmosphere of 1960s New York, and only in the Stonewall Bar, among the drag queens who eschew them as troublemakers, can these white collar rebels get the ban they seek. Here, in this astutely observed gay underworld, both sides find the police brutality they need to spark their simmering cause into violent inferno. A wonderful, high-camp frolic and witty political drama, STONEWALL's humor and panache take it right onto Main Street. – Oscar Moore, London Film Festival