“Julio of Jackson Heights” FREE Online Documentary Screening

Julio Rivera, a Bronx-born Puerto Rican sex worker, was murdered in the P.S. 69 in Jackson Heights, Queens on July 2, 1990, by three young men looking to clean up their neighborhood by “stretching out a gay guy”, but instead the murder sparked the coming out of New York’s largest and until then most closeted LGBTQ community. The film starts as an intimate portrait of the LGBTQ world of Queens in the 1950s-80s, and then reconstructs the process by which Julio’s friends and family were able to build a coalition for justice that ultimately became a coalition for equality.

About the filmmaker: Born and raised in Jackson Heights and Elmhurst, Richard Shpuntoff has directed a dozen short films that have screened at over 30 festivals and venues internationally including Epiphany of ReturningMorning Dance, and In Queens my ambitious soul I bare. He served as the photographer of the Queens Pride Parade for its first 20 years. His most recent film Everything that is forgotten in an instant will premiere at Sheffield Doc/Fest this year.











When: Tue., Jun. 16, 2020 at 5:00 pm
Where: Queens Historical Society
Weeping Beech Park, 143-135 37th Avenue
718-939-0647
Price: Free
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Julio Rivera, a Bronx-born Puerto Rican sex worker, was murdered in the P.S. 69 in Jackson Heights, Queens on July 2, 1990, by three young men looking to clean up their neighborhood by “stretching out a gay guy”, but instead the murder sparked the coming out of New York’s largest and until then most closeted LGBTQ community. The film starts as an intimate portrait of the LGBTQ world of Queens in the 1950s-80s, and then reconstructs the process by which Julio’s friends and family were able to build a coalition for justice that ultimately became a coalition for equality.

About the filmmaker: Born and raised in Jackson Heights and Elmhurst, Richard Shpuntoff has directed a dozen short films that have screened at over 30 festivals and venues internationally including Epiphany of ReturningMorning Dance, and In Queens my ambitious soul I bare. He served as the photographer of the Queens Pride Parade for its first 20 years. His most recent film Everything that is forgotten in an instant will premiere at Sheffield Doc/Fest this year.

Buy tickets/get more info now