Aids Food Store Long Beach collects donations during the Long Beach Lesbian and Gay Pride Parade along Ocean Boulevard on May 20, 2018. Photo: Stephen Carr / StephenCarrPhotography.com
A documentary about the LGBTQ pride movement and the impact it has had on the queer community will air on YouTube next year, the platform announced this week.
“State of Pride,” which is scheduled for a June 2019 release, is being directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, the filmmaking duo who worked on “The Celluloid Closet” and the Academy Award-winning “Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt.”
“We are incredibly honored to bring this important and compelling documentary ‘State of Pride’ to people around the world,” Susanne Daniels, YouTube’s global head of original content, said in a statement Thursday. “The film features powerful conversations with inspiring individuals as they open up about Pride and how it has changed over the past 50 years.”
YouTube was criticized in June — National LGBTQ Pride Month — for airing antigay ads before LGBTQ videos. The channel apologized about a month later via Twitter.
For the Pride documentary, Raymond Braun, who worked on LGBTQ outreach efforts, has been traveling across the country, attending Pride events in major cities and smaller towns, and interviewing people about how the movement has impacted them.
YouTube will release the film on its free, ad-supported site, not its YouTube Premium subscription service.
