Leilah Weinraub’s film SHAKEDOWN (2017) is an intoxicating, dreamlike portrait of Los Angeles’s African-American lesbian strip club scene, in which a network of female performers attached to a weekly party called Shakedown take center stage. SHAKEDOWN chronicles the personal and professional relationships of the party’s dancers and organizers, among them: Ronnie-Ron, Shakedown Productions’s creator and emcee; Mahogany, the legendary mother of the scene; Egypt, Shakedown’s star dancer; and Jazmine, the Queen of Shakedown. Mapping out economies of pleasure rarely seen onscreen, Weinraub herself emerges as a desiring participant, rejecting the pose of “neutral onlooker” in favor the intimate gaze of a collaborator and confidante. (Whitney Museum of American Art)

Preceded by: HAPPY BIRTHDAY MARSHA! (d. Reina Gosset & Sasha Wortzel. USA. 2017)

Happy Birthday, Marsha! is a film about iconic transgender artist and activist, Marsha “Pay it No Mind” Johnson and her life in the hours before she ignited the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City.

Presented as part of the Contrast Film Festival, highlighting boundary-pushing, genre-defying, and forward-thinking art with an emphasis on female & queer creators.

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Directed by Leilah Weinraub
USA, 2018, 1h 22min, Digital
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Tickets: https://www.austinfilm.org/screening/shakedown/

Festival badge: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/contrast-film-festival-tickets-45999723411