Under the Radar is Women and Hollywood’s newest feature. Published monthly, the post offers a chance for us to highlight works by and/or about women that haven’t received big releases or significant coverage in the press, but are wholly worthy of attention.
To recommend a title for this feature, please e-mail womenandhollywoodinterns@gmail.com.
Leilah Weinraub’s debut documentary feature “Shakedown” tells the story of the community that formed around a weekly Black lesbian strip club event in South Central Los Angeles dating back to the late 1990s. For more than six years, Weinraub was an in-house documentarian who filmed the weekly event, a safe space for queer Black women to express their sexuality and be entertained in the face of unwarranted police harassment.
Made from a collection of roughly 400 hours of footage, the documentary is an intimate portrait of four main characters: Ronnie-Ron, creator and emcee of the weekly event known as the Shakedown; Mahogany, the legendary “Mother” of the community; Egypt, the Shakedown’s star dancer; and Jazmine, the “Queen” of the Shakedown.
In 2011 Weinraub raised $30,000 via Kickstarter to finish the film. She tried different storytelling formats for the piece — episodic, limited series, and eventually, a 60-minute version which premiered at the 2017 Whitney Museum of American Art’s Biennial. The film’s final version is an 82-minute feature that had its world premiere at the 2018 Berlinale Film Festival.
Resisting the limitations of genre in making the film, Weinraub abandoned “the pose of the ‘neutral onlooker’ in favor of the intimate gaze of collaborator and confidante,” according to the Whitney’s website.
During a talk at the Museum of Modern Art in Frankfurt, Germany, Weinraub said “the process of labor drove the interviews” with the characters in the film, which was influenced by Studs Terkel’s classic book “Working.” Weinraub found that starting with the topic of how the dancers approached their work often led to deeper conversations around money, self-esteem, and the bond among the community of dancers and club-goers.
“[The Shakedown]” was this bubble moment that nobody knew about that was completely utopic,” Weinraub observed.
The film is currently making its way around the festival circuit and is awaiting distribution.
Upcoming screenings:
Sunday, March 18, 2018 — MOMA PS1 VW Sunday Sessions — Screening & Talkback @ 1:00 & 3:00 PM— Queens, New York
Watch excerpts of the film as well as an interview with the director below:
