The Times of Harvey Milk: A Documentary Portrait of Communities in Conflict

Before there was this year’s Academy Awards celebrated “Milk,” there was the widely acclaimed “The Times of Harvey Milk,” which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film in 1984. The documentary chronicles the political career of Harvey Milk, who was San Francisco’s first openly gay elected Board Supervisor.

“The Times of Harvey Milk” documents through assembled historic film clips the tumultuous story of Milk’s grass-roots political organizing and election, through the shocking murders and their repercussions. It takes the film’s viewers along with the eloquent candle-light memorial joined by tens of thousands of San Franciscans on the evening of the assassinations, to the scenes of angry crowds who stormed San Francisco’s City Hall in the aftermath of the lenient sentence that Dan White received at his murder trial.

This Academy Award-winning documentary feature film depicts not only Harvey Milk himself, but also the political and social milieu of the era in which he lived. From this perspective, the film continues to have significant relevance for our nation today, standing as a classic portrait of communities and cultural values in severe conflict. The film was produced subsequent to Harvey Milk’s death using archival footage, so that Milk is credited posthumously as the lead actor. Other politicians, including San Francisco’s then-mayor George Moscone (assassinated with Milk) and Moscone’s successor and now U. S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, also appear in the archival footage. The film’s narration is provided by the acclaimed stage and screen actor Harvey Fierstein, who at that time had just achieved great success with his own Tony Award-winning Broadway play “Torch Song Trilogy.”

This classic portrait of communities in conflict is a stunning reminder of what many of us are still facing today. Our most urgent present-day struggles are reflected in this film’s dramatic account of Harvey Milk’s grass-roots political organizing, election and amazing defeat of California's Proposition 6.

This detailed article presents a number of vintage photos and three videos. In addition, it includes the full-length version of this celebrated documentary, as well as a rare slideshow of vintage photographs of Harvey Milk and San Francisco during the mid-1960’s and 70s.