On June 19, 1964, Carol Doda, a young woman with an eager smile and a love of performing, sparked a revolution in entertainment that reverberates to this day. Lowered from the ceiling of San Francisco’s popular Condor Club on a white baby grand piano wearing only a “monokini,” she became instantly famous as America’s first topless dancer.

Carol Doda Topless at the Condor, a documentary feature from co-directors Marlo McKenzie and Jonathan Parker, takes audiences behind the scenes of San Francisco’s vibrant club scene for an entertaining and revealing look at Doda’s improbable journey from cocktail waitress to global icon and pioneering defender of sexual freedom.

A small-town girl who came to the city looking for excitement and fame, Doda would become a symbol of sexual liberation during the boundary-shattering San Francisco of the 1960s. Her performances transformed her into a countercultural heroine and made the Condor a landmark destination for celebrities, well-heeled San Franciscans and curious out-of-towners alike. As topless clubs opened throughout the city’s North Beach neighborhood, Doda consistently raised the ante, enhancing her breasts with risky experimental silicone injections, and, in 1969, performing completely nude.

Based in part on Three Nights at the Condor, a memoir by Benita Mattioli, the wife of Condor co-owner Pete Mattioli, Carol Doda Topless at the Condor captures the freewheeling spirit and uninhibited appetite for excitement that made San Francisco the center of a cultural upheaval that changed the rules forever. McKenzie and Parker bring together a compelling array of Doda’s contemporaries, including dancers, club owners, bartenders, musicians and others, who share their first-hand experiences. The film also features interviews with academics who have studied Doda’s role in redefining attitudes toward female nudity, as well as candid, fascinating interviews with Doda herself.