The documentary Upstairs Inferno
from director Robert L. Camina will have its Texas premiere next
month at the Austin
Film Festival.
The film, which screens Sunday,
November 1, takes a look at the 1973 firebombing of a New Orleans gay
bar that left dozens dead.
On June 24, 1973 a massive panic broke
out when the Upstairs Lounge was firebombed.
Investigators concluded that the fire,
which killed 32, was arson, but no one was ever charged with the
crime.
What happened that night and how it set
back the gay rights movement in New Orleans is the subject of
Upstairs Inferno. (Watch
the documentary's trailer.)
Camina's previous film, Raid of the
Rainbow Lounge, documented the 2009 police raid of a Dallas-Forth
Worth gay bar which left the local LGBT community stunned.