The implementation
This week we revisit the 1978 documentary Gays United Statesa simple but extremely powerful collection of interviews and video footage from multiple Pride parades across the country on the same day. Seeing these people live out what is now our history provides a necessary retrospective on how much we have changed. But at its core, it’s about showing how similar things still are, for better and for worse.
Gays United Statesdirected by Arthur J. Bressan, Jr., does not follow a simple narrative and does not have a specific subject. It captures the crowds at several Pride parades in 1977 (including in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Dade County, Florida) and, through simple but candid, “man-on-the-street” interviews, it manages to give a comprehensive sense of the social and political climate of the time.
We can see an eclectic collection of communities coming together to celebrate one another through this time capsule: from butch lesbians to effeminate drag queens, from children who had never seen gay people before to elders who fought in World War II.
There are also radical progressives trying to make their voices heard, and hateful conservatives spouting a narrative that feels eerily familiar these days. The film was shot in the wake of Anita Bryant’s hate campaign and her efforts to repeal anti-discrimination policies in Florida, so the mood in the crowd is raw and sensitive.
