Beautiful and moving (spoilers?)

Do they count as spoilers if it's a documentary and obviously everything is now known as history?

I probably am going to want to watch this a few more times before writing in more detail about it, but I found this film to be beautiful and moving.

Here we see people in the mid-70s talking openly and frankly and wonderfully about their experiences, some happy, and some terrifying.

My first exposure to gay people was (I think) the Donahue show in the 80s, where gay people wouldn't even appear with that generally gay-friendly host without a bag over their head, or some other disguise like a fake moustache, wig, and large sunglasses. This film predates that. These are incredibly brave people we're seeing.

It also predates AIDS. It is eerie, knowing that as difficult as the times were for gay people, they were in the relative "calm" before the storm, and had no idea what was coming, medically or socially or politically.

And I've always been a fan of gay music. There's still a deep internal homophobia in the gay community which says that hetero music (or lyric-less techno) is good enough. It is a joy to hear music with gay lyrics from so far back, and to see the performance itself.

It's interesting in some ways how far we have come in three and a half decades, and also how little some things have changed at all.

This is a must-see, for anyone who knows a gay person, or who has any interest in US history.