This essential history of gay rights in America centers on June 27, 1969, the night that patrons of a Greenwich Village bar, the Stonewall Inn, refused to be rounded up and humiliated just for being themselves. America was a homophobic nation, deluded by the belief—bolstered by hysterical documentaries like Mike Wallace’s CBS Reports episode “The Homosexuals”—that homosexuality was a mental illness. There was no such thing as being out of the closet—there was only in the closet. Greenwich Village was the exception, a place where gay people met openly. One hot summer night, with a police raid in progress, something snapped, and gays and lesbians fought back, hurling beer bottles and stones at the police. The loud and proud gay rights march that soon followed announced that gay people would now refuse to be treated as criminals. With a wealth of archival material and extensive interviews with participants, this film memorializes the rebellion that ushered in the gay liberation era.  LB