Leilah Weinraub

Daily Screening Times, Tue - Sun:

12:00pm, 1:30pm, 3:00pm, 4:30pm

Runtime: 1 hr 15 mins

Shakedown tells the story of Los Angeles’ black lesbian strip club scene and its genesis crafted by Weinraub over a fifteen-year period that began in 2002. Owned and operated by women, underground and illegal in nature, the club Shakedown is the darker, faster, younger iteration of this dance culture. Shakedown emerged from a post-riots, post-OJ, post-integration but still very racially divided Los Angeles. In this divided city Shakedown is an independent, all black and all female cash economy.

The film chronicles the explicit performances and personal relationships of the party’s dancers and organizers including Ronnie-Ron, Shakedown Productions’ creator and emcee; Mahogany, the legendary “mother” of the scene; Egypt, their star performer; and Jazmyne, the “Queen” of Shakedown. The story functions as a legend where money is both myth and material. Cumulatively, questions arise about how to diagram the before and after of a utopic moment.

Since its world premiere at the 68th Berlin International Film Festival in February 2018, the film has been shown in various institutions and festivals around the world, navigating the line between the film and art industries. Recent screenings include those at the Tate, London; ICA, London; MoMA PS1, New York; Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva; True/False Film Festival, Missouri; Sheffield Doc/Fest, England; Images Festival, Toronto and Frameline Film Festival, San Francisco. The presentation at GBE will be the first time the film has played in the same location for an extended period of time, making it more accessible to a wider audience.

Leilah Weinraub (b. 1979, Los Angeles) is an artist and director living in New York. As CEO and co-founder of Hood By Air, the subversive New York-based fashion collective known for its cult following, Weinraub helped to radicalize fashion by championing what she calls “modern people” - the rising class of consumers who subvert traditional markers of race, class, and gender and revel in freedom, lawlessness, and spectacle. As a filmmaker, Weinraub has helped document such unacknowledged tastemakers, particularly those belonging to queer, autonomous communities of color whose creative output is often plundered by mass culture but whose stories are rarely told on their own terms.