Vito Russo

Vito Russo was involved with many important projects in the early history of the gay and lesbian movement, and he was there fighting for change until his death from complications caused by AIDS in 1990 at the age of 44. A New York native, Russo was one of the earliest activists to study the media's impact on our lives and recognize that media representation partially determines how lesbians and gays are treated. Russo's work in media arose from his love of films. In the early 1970's, he organized screenings of camp classics at New York's Firehouse for the Gay Activist Alliance. Those screenings grew into lectures, which grew further into articles that appeared in The Advocate, Rolling Stone and The Village Voice. Hethen assembled his research and work into the book The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality In the Movies, a highly acclaimed survey of how gay men and lesbians have been portrayed in film. Published in 1981 and later revised in 1987, this landmark text was political, scholarly a