Screaming Queens
Screaming Queens is a 2005 documentary directed by Susan Stryker and Victor Silverman that recovers the largely forgotten story of the 1966 uprising at Gene Compton’s Cafeteria in San Francisco’s Tenderloin. The film combines archival material, historical research, and interviews with people who lived in the neighborhood to reconstruct a moment when transgender women, drag queens, hustlers, and other queer residents fought back against persistent police harassment—three years before the Stonewall uprising in New York.
More than a film about a single night of resistance, Screaming Queens documents the community that existed around Compton’s and the conditions that made the uprising possible. In doing so, it helped bring the event back into public memory and establish the Tenderloin’s significance in transgender history—a legacy that would later become central to the creation and identity of San Francisco’s Transgender District.