William Yang: Friends of Dorothy

Photographer William Yang has observed, captured and participated in four decades of Sydney’s LGBT culture. This documentary uses hundreds of Yang’s own photographs as the basis for his tales from a variety of eras – the gay underground of the '60s, beginnings of the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, the '80s AIDS epidemic, and party scene of the '90s.

"Famed photographer William Yang came out in Sydney in the early '70s, a period of great social change. "I never consciously came out as a gay man, I was swept out by events at the time." He has seen the formation of a gay activist culture in the '70s, the commercialisation of the gay scene in the '80s, and he has lived through the devastating effects of AIDS in the early '90s. William lost two of his best friends, Peter Tully and David McDiarmid, both artists, during this period. His stories are set against a backdrop of the Gay Mardi Gras, which began as a protest march in 1978." (Melbourne Queer Film Festival)

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