Stonewall (film)

Stonewall is a 1995 historical comedy-drama film. Inspired by the memoir of the same title by openly gay historian Martin Duberman, Stonewall is a fictionalized account of the weeks leading up to the Stonewall riots, a seminal event in the modern American gay rights movement. Stonewall was the final film of British film director Nigel Finch, who died of an AIDS-related illness shortly after completing filming.

Stonewall stars Guillermo Díaz, Frederick Weller, Duane Boutte and Brendan Corbalis. Dwight Ewell and Luis Guzmán also make cameos.

While the film is a work of fiction, Finch makes the unusual directorial choice of including documentary-style interview footage with several people who were at the Stonewall Inn during the uprising. Finch also intersperses lip synch numbers performed by the actors throughout the film to function as something of a Greek chorus.

The film has now been made into a stage play by Rikki Beadle-Blair and premiered in London and The Edinburgh Festival in 2007.

Plot summary

Matty Dean (Weller), a young gay man, arrives in New York City by bus and immediately heads for Greenwich Village. There he falls in with drag queen La Miranda (Díaz) and friends, who take him to the Stonewall Inn. There is a police raid and Mattie and La Miranda are arrested.

They are bailed out by Bostonia (Boutte), who is the African-American "mother" of the family of queens who hang out at the Stonewall. Bostonia is the secret lover of...
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