The revolution continues: in times of political strife, the 1999 documentary After Stonewall couldn't be timelier.

After Stonewall 

* Directed by John Scagliotti

* Narrated by Melissa Etheridge

* First Run Features * $29.95

No one could have picked a more auspicious moment for the home video debut of After Stonewall than right now. While this review of gay American history covers three key decades up to 1999, when it was released, no one can look at John Scagliotti's film without thinking of this past year. The enormous progress the movement has made has never been without straggle or setbacks, and while our enemies' names might have changed, their duplicitous thuggishness hasn't. And the current straggle over gay marriage has countless echoes of the past.

Narrated by Melissa Etheridge, this sequel to 1984's Before Stonewall is high-lighted by interviews with such notables as novelists Dorothy Allison and Rita Mae Brown; playwright Craig Lucas; and activists Arnie Kantrowitz, Barbara Gittings, Barbara Smith, and--what queer history would be complete without him?--Larry Kramer. The film seeks to connect the past to a very living present: Those part of that past will obviously see this film differently than a younger generation, for whom much of this will be startling news.

As the film shows, new activist organizations sprang up in the wake of the 1969 Stonewall riot, replacing the more staid "homophile" groups of the '50s. There was much straggle among allies, with lesbians finding their ground in the women's movement while gay men dominated the other groups. The AIDS crisis brought gays and lesbians together, as did other moments, such as the backlash created by Anita Bryant and her "Save the Children" campaign--a precursors of the fundamentalist Christian campaigns of today. The assassination of Harvey Milk and the murder of Matthew Shepard are like-wise highlighted as moments of tragedy turned to triumph though cooperative alliances.

Still, After Stonewall hones in again and again on the personal level: Jewelle Gomez on what it means to be black and lesbian, Barney Frank on coming out after spending years in the closet, Dorothy Allison on the "passive suicide" of those who stay there. Perhaps most striking of all is a newly included interview with Allison in which she recalls a protest on the campus of Yale University that she joined with activist Vito Russo. Lying on the ground with other protesters and defying the police, Allison recalls, was a moment of pure bliss for her and Russo--one that today's often complacent generation would do much to learn from.

Ehrenstein is the author of Open Secret: Gay Hollywood, 1928-2000.