Monday, June 18, 9:15 p.m. Castro
INTERNATIONAL PREMIERE
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| Riot |
In 1978, nine years after the Stonewall riots in New York City, gay life in Sydney, Australia, was still under the thumb — and too often under the boot heel — of the corrupt and benighted New South Wales Police. Then a group of activists decided, in stead of a conventional protest march, they would hold a gay mardi gras. Today the event is a cornerstone of Sydney’s tourist industry as well as one of the largest LGBTQ events in the world.
Riot is a docudrama, recreating the events leading up to the 1978 mardi gras, beginning in 1972. We follow the lives of several of the activists, principally Lance Gowland and Marg McMann, as they talk communist theory and protest marches and meeting with the premier. Unfortunately, at 105 minutes it’s a lumbering crawl through an overly detailed prologue, taking well over an hour to finally arrive at 1978. I think it could be a much more engaging film with a bit of editing, losing maybe about half an hour of the early stuff. However, because of the enormous historical significance of these events that have been largely forgotten over the intervening four decades, I will give it a Recommended.
This film includes graphic depictions of homophobic police violence.
* IMDb • official press release •
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