In
1978, Harvey Milk was elected to the San Francisco city
council, becoming the first openly gay person to be elected
to public office in California. One year later, he and
Mayor George Moscone were shot and killed by Milk’s fellow
council member, former police officer and fire fighter
Dan White. The Times of Harvey Milk recreates the tumultuous
story of Milk’s grass-roots political organizing and election,
through the shocking murders and their repercussionsfrom
the eloquent candle-light memorial joined by tens of thousands
of San Franciscans on the evening of the assassinations,
to the angry mobs who stormed City Hall, breaking windows
and torching police cars in the aftermath of White’s lenient
sentencing at his murder trial.
This
classic portrait of communities in conflict has won countless
awards, including the Academy Award for best documentary
feature, and was voted one of the two best documentaries
of the decade in an American Film Magazine critics’ poll.
The University of California Film and Television archive
recently selected The Times of Harvey Milk as a
restoration project, and as a result the film can now
be seen for the first time in 35mm Dolby stereo.
