Did you know that the Word Is Out? I’ve never seen it, but nearly 33 years after its November 1977 premiere at the Castro Theater in San Francisco, the landmark feature-length documentary about gay and lesbian life — considered the first film about gay people made by gay people — is a groundbreaking affair. It looks into the lives of 26 diverse people, including writer Elsa Gidlow, professor Sally Gearhart, and inventor John Burnside, and offers what at the time was an extremely important lesson: that queer folks are just like everybody else.

“It’s given me a sense of how powerful film can be to move people,” says David Gillon, a Hartford video producer who was one of the film’s subjects. “Thirty years later, this film still moves me.” Word Is Out: Stories Of Some of Our Lives has been restored and has been screened at San Francisco’s Frameline festival, Los Angeles’ OutFest and recently had a run at NYC’s Anthology Film Archives. The re-mastered print will soon be released on DVD with exclusive updates on the cast and crew of the flick.

Check out the trailer here: