A documentary film about a
pre-Stonewall police raid in San Francisco and a resulting lawsuit
had its sold out premiere last month at Frameline, San Francisco's
LGBT film festival.
Lewd & Lascivious takes a
look at a 1965 incident of police brutality that helped shape the
future of San Francisco's gay community.
The unlikely heroes in this saga are a
group of straight ministers fed up with police discrimination and
laws criminalizing gay sex.
The ministers filed a lawsuit against
the San Francisco Police Department after the police attempted to
shut down a gay dance.
“It was the first time in San
Francisco history that 500 gay men and women gathered together in one
spot,” one of the ministers says in the film. “And the police
did not know how to handle this.”
“We expected the police to
overreact,” another minister says. (A trailer for the film is
embedded on this page. Visit
our video library for more videos.)
Producers of the film have launched a
Kickstarter campaign to help cover costs associated with the
film's production and distribution.