On June 27th, 1969, the mafia controlled gay bar, the Stonewall Inn, was busted by a group of police. There was nothing out of the usual in this raid. Police were notorious for hassling the drag-queens in New York, and for taking protection money from the owners of the bars. But this time the homosexuals, lesbians and transvestites in the bar fought back and, over three days and nights, their action and protest gave birth to the modern gay and lesbian rights movement.

Nigel Finch, a British director, has made a historically complex and stylistically dazzling musical that examines the circumstances that led to the Stonewall Riots. A young man, Matty Dean (Frederick Weller) comes to New York City from the mid-west, and he is befriended by LaMiranda (Guillermo Diaz), a Puerto Rican drag-queen. The film traces Matty’s involvement with both the Latino drag queens, as well as his involvement in the emerging homosexual rights movement. By presenting the differences between the drag queens and the more conservative gay and lesbian lobbyists as resulting from differences in class, race, and ethnicity Stonewall raises many complex and illuminating questions about sexuality and culture, activism and politics.

That it manages to provoke such questions within a mise-en-scene that prioritizes the glamour and radical subversive potential of camp and popular culture, makes it a deeply entertaining film. This was Finch’s last film before his death from an AIDS related illness, but Stonewall, emerging as it did from the civil rights and political struggles centred around AIDS and HIV, is a central work of Queer American cinema. —ACMI