
Thirteen men and one woman look back at gay life and sex in Manhattan and Fire Island - from Stonewall (June, 1969) to the first reporting on AIDS (June, 1981). They describe the rapid move from repression to celebration, from the removal of shame to joy, the on-going search for "someone," the freedom before AIDS, the friendships, and brotherhood. They take us through cruising and sex in public places, the drug scene, the bars and the baths, the birth of entertainment and dan... (Full plot summary below)
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Thirteen men and one woman look back at gay life and sex in Manhattan and Fire Island - from Stonewall (June, 1969) to the first reporting on AIDS (June, 1981). They describe the rapid move from repression to celebration, from the removal of shame to joy, the on-going search for "someone," the freedom before AIDS, the friendships, and brotherhood. They take us through cruising and sex in public places, the drug scene, the bars and the baths, the birth of entertainment and dance clubs, and starry nights on Fire Island. Photographs, home movies, newsreels, and film clips illustrate the story. A few contemporary "what did the 70's mean?" man-in-the-street takes end the documentary.
Leave your thoughts about Gay Sex in the 70s.
| L.A. WeeklyErnest HardyIt's fair to assume that most viewers likely to see the film, whose title is the very definition of truth in advertising, already own the knowledge being sold. |
| Boston GlobeWesley MorrisYet despite the retrospective sensationalism, Lovett's 70-minute documentary is a sobering anti-erotic cautionary tale. |
| Washington PostAnn HornadayAn engrossing piece of social history, a lively, astonishingly well-documented excavation of that period. |
| Salon.comAndrew O'HehirLovett's film is a finely balanced and loving work of history, which never tries to sugarcoat elements of the explosion of gay sexuality three decades ago that may seem excessive or disturbing to some contemporary viewers. |
| Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanThe director, Joseph Lovett, wants us to ask if there's such a thing as too much freedom, and he has the sobriety to say yes -- and no. |
| The New York TimesLawrence Van GelderWithin that narrow framework, the film is quite successful, using archival photographs, clips from pornographic films and television commercials, and interviews to evoke the period between June 1969, when the Stonewall riots brought homosexuality out of the shadows, to June 1981, when the AIDS epidemic began. |
| Eye for FilmAmber WilkinsonThis is an immersive documentary, evoking the period, and arguing the case that although the unbridled hedonism did bring dangers and problems with it, there was also something of a idyllic euphoria experienced by those in this first wave of gay freedom. |
| Ozus' World Movie ReviewsDennis SchwartzShows us the faces of some of the gay activists involved with that free love party scene who survived. |
| TV GuideKen FoxSome four decades after the birth of the gay-rights movement, the excess and sexual abandon of gay life in the '70s seems more an aberration than an accurate picture of out-and-about gay life at the end of the 20th century. |
| The A.V. ClubNoel MurrayLively, impassioned, well-structured documentary. |