FREE RADICALS OF NEW YORK is a template, is a love story, is a tale of war. Is evidence. Is never-before-seen archival footage of crucial, brilliant actions from a community fighting for their lives. 

For 35 years, documentary filmmaker and queer archivist Aline Allegra has sat with the work of her youth: never-before-seen footage from 5 years of ACT UP demonstrations in the heart of New York City. Pride marches and die-ins and the storming of St. Patrick’s Cathedral and Grand Central Station by thousands desperate to be heard. Dyke Marches full of women reveling in their joy, pouring into the streets to make out and laugh and talk to the camera. There was Marsha P. Johnson walking by, a young Lea DeLaria on the bullhorn, Debbie Harry throwing a free concert right on Christopher Street to keep spirits high. There was, of course, police brutality. Rows and rows of men who knew they wouldn’t see the end of the epidemic and fought as long as they could anyway. From ’89-’94, to be gay was also to be a soldier, loud and out and relentless. 
For Allegra, who knew from her work (at a new little channel called MTV) that being behind the camera was a great way for a shy closeted lesbian to finally talk to women, being gay also became a front line testimonial. At each demonstration, she grabbed a camera and hustled to capture every moment she could, as a way to protect her new community in the moment, and document for the future. Free Radicals of New York is a story of queer joy and queer devastation and queer power. Of the impact of one person getting involved. It is the history our youth has never been taught, and it is the evidence that we can never go back. 
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Pulling from video, print, and ephemera archives, as well as featuring new interviews, Free Radicals of New York is part personal narrative and part queer history  of a recent past which has been all but invisible -- till now.  This is the powerful, must-see documentary of our time.