After moving to San Francisco, the middle-aged New Yorker, Harvey Milk, became a Gay Rights activist and city politician. On his third attempt, he was elected to San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors in 1977, making him the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in the USA. The following year, both he and the city’s mayor, George Moscone, were shot to death by former city supervisor, Dan White, who blamed his former colleagues for denying White’s attempt to rescind his resignation from the board.

Mr. Milk had been the subject of several books and the Academy Award-winning documentary feature, The Times of Harvey Milk; but Milk is the first fictional feature to explore private aspects of the man’s personal life and career. Milk (made by Gus vant Sant, director of films like Paranoid Park and Elephant) was filmed on location in San Francisco. Many of Mr Milk’s real-life surviving friends and former associates participated in the making of this film, several appearing on camera.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 7th, 2008 at 21:00 and is filed under Cinema, Counter Culture, Queer History, Video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.