TF.ORG - The Films - movies download portal

Milk opens with archival footage of police raiding gay bars and arresting patrons during the 1950s and 1960s, followed by Dianne Feinstein's November 27, 1978 announcement to the press that Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone have been assassinated. The film flashes back to 1970, with Milk's accidental meeting with his much younger lover, Scott Smith.

Milk and Smith decide to move to San Francisco in the hope of finding larger acceptance of a gay lifestyle. After a period of time they open Castro Camera in the heart of Eureka Valley, a working class neighborhood in the process of evolving into a predominantly gay neighborhood known as The Castro. Frustrated by the bigotry and oppression they encounter in the once Irish-Catholic neighborhood, Milk utilizes his background as a businessman to become a gay activist, eventually becoming a mentor for Cleve Jones. His all-consuming obsession with politics, however, destroys his relationship with Smith who leaves him. Milk later meets Jack Lira and falls in love with his unpretentious and simple nature. As with Scott, however, Lira cannot tolerate Milk's devotion to political activism and eventually hangs himself.

After two unsuccessful political campaigns in 1973 and 1975 to become a city supervisor, Milk finally wins a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977 for District 5. His victory makes him the first openly gay man to be voted into major public office in the United States. Milk subsequently meets fellow Supervisor Dan White, a Vietnam veteran and former police officer and firefighter. White, who is politically and socially conservative, has a difficult relationship with Milk.

Milk and White forge a complex working relationship. Milk is invited to, and attends, the christening of White's first child, and White asks for Milk's assistance in preventing a psychiatric hospital from opening in White's district, possibly in exchange for White's support of Milk's citywide gay rights ordinance. When Milk fails to support White, White feels betrayed, and ultimately becomes the sole vote against the gay rights ordinance. Milk also launches an effort to defeat Proposition 6 which was an initiative on the California State ballot in November of 1978. Sponsored by John Briggs, a conservative state legislator from Orange County, Proposition 6 sought to ban gays and lesbians (in addition to anyone who supported them), from working in California's public schools. It was also was part of a nationwide conservative movement that started with the successful campaign headed by Anita Bryant and her organization Save Our Children in Dade County, Florida to repeal a local gay rights ordinance. On November 7, 1978, after working tirelessly against Proposition 6, Milk and his supporters rejoice in the wake of its defeat. White, increasingly unstable over the course of the film, highly concerned with a possible supervisor pay raise, and having supported the proposition, resigns from the Board shortly thereafter. He later changes his mind and asks the city to rescind his decision. Mayor George Moscone denies his request, after having been lobbied by Milk to do so.

On the morning of November 27, 1978, White enters San Francisco City Hall through a basement window in order to conceal a gun from metal detectors. He requests another meeting with Moscone, who rebuffs his request for re-appointment. Enraged, White shoots Moscone and then Milk. The film ends with an aerial shot of the candlelight vigil held by thousands for Milk and Moscone throughout the streets of the city.