synopsis

From Jeffrey Schwarz, the director of the acclaimed LGBT documentaries WRANGLER: ANATOMY OF AN ICON, I AM DIVINE, and TAB HUNTER CONFIDENTIAL, comes this extraordinary portrait of activist and film historian Vito Russo. Though Russo’s most famous for “The Celluloid Closet”, a groundbreaking book on LGBT representation in cinema (which was made into an acclaimed 1995 documentary by Jeffrey Friedman and Rob Epstein), far too few people know about his role as an activist which began in the 1960s. Schwarz traces Russo’s life from his early days struggling to find acceptance from his family in New Jersey to his many years spent fighting for gay rights in New York City, before the AIDS pandemic turned him into a prominent elder statesman and public speaker for the activist group ACT UP. Schwarz intersperses never before seen archival footage and photos with interviews with prominent activists, filmmakers, friends and family about the impact of Russo’s remarkable life, which continues to this very day, over 25 years after his too-early death in 1990. After premiering at the 2011 edition of the prestigious New York Film Festival, VITO went on to screen around the globe at dozens of festivals, before netting an Emmy Award in 2013.