A film by Rob Epstein and Richard Schmiechen

Photo by John McDermott.

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 firefighter 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 repercussions—from 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 the lenient sentence White received 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 best documentaries of the decade in an American Film Magazine critics’ poll. The University of California Film and Television archive 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.

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