Before Stonewall: The Making of a Gay and Lesbian Community is a 1984 American documentary film

Documentary film

Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...

 about the LGBT

LGBT

LGBT is an initialism that collectively refers to "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender" people. In use since the 1990s, the term "LGBT" is an adaptation of the initialism "LGB", which itself started replacing the phrase "gay community" beginning in the mid-to-late 1980s, which many within the...

 community prior to the 1969 Stonewall riots

Stonewall riots

The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City...

. It was narrated by author Rita Mae Brown

Rita Mae Brown

Rita Mae Brown is an American writer. She is best known for her first novel Rubyfruit Jungle. Published in 1973, it dealt with lesbian themes in an explicit manner unusual for the time...

, co-produced by John Scagliotti

John Scagliotti

John Scagliotti is an American film director and producer, and radio broadcaster. He has won awards for his work on documentaries about LGBT issues including Before Stonewall and After Stonewall.-Biography:...

 and Robert Rosenberg, and co-directed by Rosenberg and Greta Schiller. It premiered at the 1984 Toronto Film Festival and was released in the United States on June 27, 1985. In 1999, producer Scagliotti directed a companion piece, After Stonewall

After Stonewall

After Stonewall is a 1999 documentary film directed by John Scagliotti about the 30 years of gay rights activism since the 1969 Stonewall riots. It is the sequel to the Scagliotti-produced 1986 film Before Stonewall and is narrated by musician Melissa Etheridge...

.

People featured

• Ann Bannon
  Ann Bannon
  Ann Bannon is an American author who, from 1957 to 1962, wrote six lesbian pulp fiction novels known as The Beebo Brinker Chronicles. The books' enduring popularity and impact on lesbian identity has earned her the title "Queen of Lesbian Pulp Fiction"...
  
  
• Lisa Ben
• Gladys Bentley
  Gladys Bentley
  Gladys Bentley was an American blues singer during the Harlem Renaissance.-Biography:Bentley was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the daughter of American George L. Bentley and his wife, a Trinidadian, Mary Mote...
  
  
• George Buse
• Carroll Davis
• Martin Duberman
  Martin Duberman
  Martin Bauml Duberman is an American historian, playwright, and gay-rights activist. He is Professor of History Emeritus at Lehman College and the Graduate School of the City University of New York and was the founder of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at the CUNY Graduate School...
  
  
• Allen Ginsberg
  Allen Ginsberg
  Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...
  
  
• Barbara Gittings
  Barbara Gittings
  Barbara Gittings was a prominent American activist for gay equality. She organized the New York chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis from 1958 to 1963, edited the national DOB magazine The Ladder from 1963 to 1966, and worked closely with Frank Kameny in the 1960s on the first picket lines that...
  
  
• Barbara Grier
  Barbara Grier
  Barbara Grier was an American writer and publisher most widely known for co-founding Naiad Press and writing and editing The Ladder under the pseudonym Gene Damon.-Early life:...
  
  
• Mabel Hampton
  Mabel Hampton
  Mabel Hampton was an American lesbian activist, a dancer during the Harlem Renaissance, and a philanthropist for both black and lesbian/gay organizations. -Early life:...
  
  
• Harry Hay
  Harry Hay
  Henry "Harry" Hay, Jr. was a labor advocate, teacher and early leader in the American LGBT rights movement. He is known for his roles in helping to found several gay organizations, including the Mattachine Society, the first sustained gay rights group in the United States.Hay was exposed early in...
  
  
• Evelyn Hooker
  Evelyn Hooker
  Evelyn Hooker was a North American psychologist most notable for her 1957 paper "The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual" in which she administered psychological tests to groups of self-identified homosexuals and heterosexuals and asked experts, based on those tests alone, to select the...
  
  
• Jim Kepner
  Jim Kepner
  James Lynn 'Jim' Kepner, Jr. was a journalist, author, historian, archivist and leader in the gay rights movement. His work was intertwined with One, Inc...
  
  
• Audre Lorde
  Audre Lorde
  Audre Lorde was a Caribbean-American writer, poet and activist.-Life:...
  
  
• Bruce Nugent

Awards

Before Stonewall was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the 1985 Sundance Film Festival

Sundance Film Festival

The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...

. It won the Best Film Award at the Houston International Film Festival, Best Documentary Feature at Los Angeles FILMEX, First Place at the National Educational Film Festival, and Honorable Mention at the Global Village Documentary Festival. In 1987, the film won Emmy Award

Emmy Award

An Emmy Award, often referred to simply as the Emmy, is a television production award, similar in nature to the Peabody Awards but more focused on entertainment, and is considered the television equivalent to the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards .A majority of Emmys are presented in various...

s for Best Historical/Cultural Program and Best Research. In 1989, it won the Festival's Plate at the Torino International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival.