According to Virgina Heffernan: "Rant videos can be seen as borrowing conventions from their 17th-century antecedents. Jonathan Field, a professor at Clemson, also cited a 1654 description of the Ranters, a much-feared array of hothead heretics in England: 'their letters and discourses being nothing else but a confused, senseless, prophane Scripture, madly made up of impious flatteries, impious kindnesses, and atheistical curses, oaths, and ranting imprecations in the same breath, or line.'"[cit]

"An extension of the identity politics-based film movements that proceeded it, and from which many of its artists were drawn due to lived necessity, AIDS activist video was ... a matter of life and death that forced interaction across and inside communities that might not otherwise have needed to communicate ... narrowcasting to the many audiences who demanded education, self-representation, and mobilization because of AIDS."[cit]

"Thirty years ago, in 1978, Word is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives startled audiences across the country when it appeared in movie theaters and on television. The first feature-length documentary about lesbian and gay identity made by gay filmmakers, the film had a huge impact when it was released and became an icon of the emerging gay rights movement of the 1970s."[cit]

According to Alex Castro: "Tongues Untied (1989) weaves poetry, performance, popular culture, personal testimony and history in a complex pattern that emerges as an essentially personal statement. It presents the situation, politics and culture of black gay men using an intense mixture of styles ranging from social documentary to experimental montage, personal narrative and lyric poetry."[cit]