Shakedown (Weinraub, 2018): ICA Cinema, 8.40pm
This screening is part of the 'Collective Visions of Pleasure' season at the ICA Cinema. The short season brings together four transgressive works from Japan, USA, Germany and Mexico to consider how group desire can become a political, world-making force, is curated by Nico Hughes and presented in association with the National Film and Television School.MUBI review:
Using video
footage shot in 2004, Weinraub’s seductively illicit and frequently
joyous film lets us voyeuristically enter an underground black lesbian
strip club in the Mid-City neighborhood of Los Angeles and revel in the
frenzied atmosphere of exuberant nudity, physical prowess, and, above
all, black queer desire. Hassled occasionally by the L.A.P.D., who we
see often shut the club down for solicitation—which seems unlikely but
is neither confirmed nor defined by the film—the status of the club and
its dancers is shown to be always in danger of being illegal through the
sheer and wonderful audacity of running such a club, as one eager
attendee remarks, “in the hood.”Why this film was made now and
not around the time Weintraub shot it is not clear, nor, exactly, is its
story, which seems in-part a vivid snapshot of Weintraub’s archive of
footage while working at the club, and a slimmer effort at telling the
evolution and sudden shutdown of the Shakedown by catching up with some
of the dancers, the club’s founder, and a pioneering dancer and
organizer a decade later (though still not in the present). All this
material provides for tantalizing glimpses into the culture (including a
fabulous montage of cheap but wondrous promotional art for numerous
strip parties), the pressures, and reflections of participating in such a
radical enterprise. But the core of the film is its original footage,
which has the lustrously fogged texture of early 2000s consumer digital
photography, and which feels like a combination (at least for this
straight white male) of barely authorized voyeurism and an enthralled
and participatory queer gaze at the extraordinary bodies and efforts of
dancers like Egypt and the show's star, Jazmine. Their work at the club
seems to exist in a unique place between labor and pleasure, as the
tremendous erotic-gymnastic efforts required to dance are readily seen,
while in interviews they speak often of acting out and evolving their
public roles, as well as the passion of their fans. Shakedown’s
impeccable packaging, with stylish credits delineating club and dancer
encounters in chapter titles and a richly narcotic soundtrack by Tom
DeWitt (former drummer of tribal-psych band Gang Gang Dance) is a
reminder that Weintraub is now known for running the hip haute
streetwear brand Hood by Air. This slick wrapping combines with the
strange sense of time evoked in the picture, with its 2004 club footage
and 2014 interviews, to hit a tone of nostalgia for something seemingly
so close yet so far away, perhaps a kind of utopic space for performance
and desire. Suffice to say, this is not your average documentary. We
should be happy indeed for such a welcome revelation of a vivacious
sexualized and racialized side of work and play that is too often, even
now, relegated to a social underground.
Daniel Kasman
Here (and above) is the trailer.
