Trailer for Roland Emmerich movie telling the story of New York protests that fuelled the gay liberation movement angers LGBT activists by leaving out key black and Latino transgender figures

LGBT activists are calling for a boycott of Stonewall, Roland Emmerich’s film about the riots that are often cited as the beginnings of the gay rights movement, after claims that the director has “whitewashed” the protest, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

The trailer for the film, which is being touted as a potential Oscar contender, shows a young white man called Danny (Jeremy Irvine) leading the fight backed, mostly, by other white men. In reality the site of the riots, the Stonewall Inn, was a popular hangout for a multi-ethnic mix of patrons, including Latino and black transgender protestors Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P Johnson, both of whom became prominent LGBT activists after the riots. Johnson is often credited with being the first to fight back after police raided the Greenwich Village bar.

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An online petition, signed so far by over 13,000 signatories, attacks the director and calls for the public to boycott the film. “Do not support a film that erases our history. Do not watch Stonewall,” the petition reads.

Another online petition says the film is “erasing the contributions of of-color queer and gender-nonconforming activists”.

“Hollywood has a long history of whitewashing and crafting White Savior narratives, but this is one step too far,” it says. “A historically accurate film about the Stonewall riots would center the stories of queer and gender-nonconforming people of color like Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P Johnson. Not relegate them to background characters in the service of a white cis-male fictional protagonist.”

Both groups have drawn their conclusions from the film’s trailer. The finished film is due in cinemas in the US on 25 September. In a Facebook post the film’s co-writer, Jon Robin Baitz, implied that the marketing of the film was not representative of the ethnic mix shown in the whole film.

“I stand before people who are angered by a film they have yet to see, and ask that their open hearts allow that the film be judged on its own merits, and not by the demands of a marketing department, because marketing is based entirely in fear, whereas art is based in rage and hope and fire,” he wrote. “American film (sigh) [is] somewhere in between – nervously shifting its weight between commerce and something greater, and stumbling all the time.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The 1969 Stonewall riots, as seen in Kate Davis and David Heilbroner’s documentary Stonewall Uprising. Photograph: Photo by Bettye Lane

Emmerich, who is gay, had addressed the issue of realistic representation before the trailer was released. “We have drag queens, lesbians, we have everything in the film because we wanted to portray a broader image of what ‘gay’ means,” he told Vulture.

Following the launch of the trailer he addressed the controversy on his Facebook account:

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“I understand that following the release of our trailer there have been initial concerns about how [the character of Danny’s] involvement is portrayed, but when this film — which is truly a labor of love for me — finally comes to theaters, audiences will see that it deeply honors the real-life activists who were there,” he wrote.

Finally the film’s nominal star, Jeremy Irvine, defended the film, again on Facebook.

“[I] can assure you all that it represents almost every race and section of society that was so fundamental to one of the most important civil rights movements in living history,” he wrote. “Marsha P Johnson is a major part of the movie, and although first hand accounts of who threw the first brick in the riots vary wildly, it is a fictional black transvestite character played by the very talented @vlad_alexis [actor Vladimir Alexis] who pulls out the first brick in the riot scenes.”