Before Sean Penn won an Academy Award portraying Harvey Milk in the film Milk, the 1984 documentary The Times of Harvey Milk won an Academy Award for Best Documentary. I'm a little behind on my Netflix queue, but today Shane and I finally got around to watching that documentary, which had been sitting around the house for a couple weeks. Since the new film, Milk, was just released this past week, my plan was to first watch the documentary and then send it back and get the Sean Penn version on Blu-Ray. We haven't seen the new film yet, but we are very anxious to see it after watching the documentary. It was quite well done.I highly recommend the documentary. Using local San Francisco television stories and personal interviews with people in Harvey's life and those affected by his life, it was a highly emotional story. Harvey's story is a reminder of both how far we have come in gaining gay civil rights (he was the first out elected official in the US) and how far we have to go. The work that Harvey did in defeating a ballot initiative to ban homosexuals from being teachers in California reflects the struggle we continue to fight today for gay marriage.
The good news is that you can watch the entire documentary for free on your computer by clicking here.
3 comments:
I've seen both and loved them both.
Milk was a remarkable man, oridnary, yet extraordinary.
We could use a man, or wman, like him today.
A good book to read, if you haven't, is "The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk" by Randy Shilts.
I've seen this one several times in the past. The first time it made me cry. I haven't seen Milk the movie yet but hope to. This is a really good documentary.
I've seen the documentary a few times. It was excellent. And I just saw the movie on Saturday night. It was excellent too.
Post a Comment