Impact
In 1978, Word Is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives startled audiences across the country when it appeared in movie theaters and on television. It was the first feature-length documentary about lesbian and gay identity made by gay filmmakers, and had a large and pioneering impact when it was released. The film became an icon of the emerging gay rights movement of the 1970s. "The silence of gay people on the screen has been broken," Vito Russo declared in The Advocate, a national gay magazine.
When audiences saw the film, thousands wrote to the Mariposa Film Group’s post office box number listed in the end credits to express how much the film meant to them — and many of them related how viewing the film saved their lives. "People who were alone and hopeless in Idaho, Utah and Kansas for the first time saw realistic and positive images of gay people on screen," said production assistant Janet Cole.
In the New York Times, David Dunlop wrote in 1996: "Understated though it was, Word Is Out had a remarkable impact, coming at a time when images of homosexuals as everyday people, as opposed to psychopaths or eccentrics, were rare."
Read more about this topic: Word Is Out: Stories Of Some Of Our Lives
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