Curator Watchlist
A powerful, emotionally direct documentary that turns Harvey Milk’s life and assassination into a clear-eyed account of queer political awakening, backlash, and community resilience. It’s especially resonant if you want history that still feels urgent rather than safely sealed off in the past.
Where to watch: Buy
Sun · 1h 30m
Director: Rob Epstein
Starring: Harvey Milk, Harvey Fierstein, Anne Kronenberg
Harvey Milk was an outspoken human rights activist and one of the first openly gay U.S. politicians elected to public office; even after his assassination in 1978, he continues to inspire disenfranchised people around the world.
Rob Epstein
Harvey Milk, Harvey Fierstein, Anne Kronenberg
A powerful, emotionally direct documentary that turns Harvey Milk’s life and assassination into a clear-eyed account of queer political awakening, backlash, and community resilience. It’s especially resonant if you want history that still feels urgent rather than safely sealed off in the past.
The Times of Harvey Milk is one of the essential American political documentaries: concise, mournful, and galvanizing. It frames Milk not just as a charismatic public figure, but as a symbol of what organized visibility can mean for people who have been pushed to the margins.
What gives the film its force is the contrast between Milk’s warmth and the cold machinery of prejudice that met him. The archival material and testimony create a sense of lived history rather than distant commemoration, and the film’s anger feels earned, not performative.
Even decades later, it lands with unsettling relevance. It is a reminder that progress is fragile, that backlash is real, and that hope in politics is not naïve when it is tied to action, solidarity, and memory.
👽 Zara 👽 (4.5★) · 706 likes
fuck every single jury member that reportedly shed a tear for dan white, fuck them
zoë rose bryant (5★) · 465 likes
really sad to realize that we’re still fighting a lot of the same fights we were fighting 46 years ago. the more things change, the more they really do stay the same i guess - the work never stops. anyway i love harvey milk and i love being queer!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Erik 🎼 (5★) · 359 likes
i love being gay also i'm sad
Kristhian Morales (5★) · 229 likes
On November 4th, 2008 I came out of a Calculus midterm at 10 pm to the news that Barack Obama had been elected president of the United States (cruel joke for a professor to schedule a midterm on election night). It was a historic night for all the obvious reasons, but for many people in California (where I went to school), it was also a night when the marriage equality movement took a huge step backwards. Proposition 8, eliminating the
Sally Jane Black · 224 likes
"You have two options. You can come to California, or you can stay in San Antonio and fight." This. This is the most important thing said in this entire film. Right now, we are all under assault - queer people, trans people, all oppressed people, all exploited people, all workers, all poor, all of us except the super-rich. And we have a choice. We can try to find a corner of this world that is less hostile to us -… more
A landmark documentary about queer community, performance, survival, and chosen family, with a similarly vital historical importance.
Shares the same urgency around activism, grief, and the power of organized resistance in the face of government failure.
An essential queer-history documentary that pairs well with this film’s sense of cultural memory and political change.
A feature dramatization of Harvey Milk’s life that complements the documentary by focusing more on intimacy and personal politics.
For viewers drawn to political struggle and collective resistance, this is a masterclass in urgent, movement-centered cinema.
A landmark documentary about injustice and the failures of the legal system, with a similarly sharp political edge.
An inspiring activism documentary about marginalized people building power, community, and lasting political change.
A forceful examination of structural injustice and the endurance of systemic oppression, with a similar sense of civic outrage.
For audiences who like history told through testimony and reflection, this offers a similarly serious engagement with power and consequence.
A bold, poetic work of queer expression and political self-definition that expands the emotional range of activist cinema.
A mainstream dramatic landmark in queer cinema that, like this film, connects personal dignity to public prejudice and legal injustice.
A searing dramatization of queer activism under crisis, with strong overlap in anger, grief, and collective urgency.
LGBTQ+ rights, political activism, assassination and martyrdom, community organizing, American civic history, justice and backlash, hope and resilience, public memory
LGBTQ history, political documentary, activism, civil rights, archival footage, 1970s America, justice system, elegiac, inspiring, queer cinema