Airdate: The Stonewall Uprising

Tomorrow SBS airs a documentary that looks at a what became a turning point in gay rights, the Stonewall riots of 1969.

It was the event that is widely recognised as inciting the gay rights movement in the US.

The film was produced and directed by Kate Davis and David Heilbroner, and is based on the book by historian David Carter, Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution. It features numerous interviews by those who were there.

This feature-length documentary explores the dramatic event that launched a worldwide rights movement.

Told by those who took part – from drag queens and street hustlers to police detectives, journalists and a former mayor of New York – and featuring a rich trove of archival footage, The Stonewall Uprising revisits a time when homosexual acts were illegal throughout America, and homosexuality itself was seen as a form of mental illness.

Hunted and often entrapped by undercover police in their hometowns, gays from around the US began fleeing to New York in search of a sanctuary. Hounded there still by an aggressive police force, they sought out furtive sex in subway bathrooms and empty meat trucks, and found a semblance of normalcy in a Mafia-run gay bar in Greenwich Village, the Stonewall Inn.

When police raided Stonewall on June 28, 1969, gay men and women did something they hadn’t done before: they fought back. As the streets of New York erupted into violent protests and street demonstrations, the collective anger announced that the gay rights movement had arrived.

It airs Tuesday, 15 March at 10.05pm on SBS ONE