Leilah Weinraub’s Shakedown (2018) chronicles the “high-femme performances” in the Los Angeles-based underground black-lesbian strip club Shakedown. The New Yorker claims that “Shakedown is neither an experimental art film nor an anthropology of gay, black femme performance in L.A. Rather, Weinraub sought to capture a moment and turn it into cinema.”The film chronicles the explicit performances and personal relationships of the party’s dancers and organizers in the early 2000s, revealing that Shakedown was more than a strip club; as one of the few spaces for lesbian subculture, the club brought together and galvanised a community of freaks and queers of color.
Writer/director/producer Leilah Weinraub will join moderator Mireille Miller-Young (Feminist Studies, UCSB) for a post-screening discussion.
SHAKEDOWN TEASER from Info at QDoc on Vimeo.