Oddball films presents Life's a Drag! a fabulous and glamorous evening of drag royalty featuring groundbreaking documentaries, campy drag fairytales and vintage San Francisco amateur footage, all from the 1950's and 1960s, when homosexuality and transgender issues were first coming to a head in American society. Highlights include Behind Every Good Man, the low-key portrait of an African American drag queen in Los Angeles. Black Cap Drag takes an in-depth look at two British drag performers in 1960s London as they discuss their lives and careers and sing a few Barbra and Marlene numbers along the way. The camptastic Sinderella retells an age-old fairy tale with a cross-dressing twist for a new generation. Amour Pour Une Femme is a quick stag-gag, with a dressing room full of lovely ladies, but they may not all really be ladies. With incredible costumery in the 1969 Halloween Show at the Levee from our very own San Francisco, and tons of other dragalicious bonuses! Empowering and entertaining, you'll want this night to drag on forever!
Date: Friday, November 2nd, 2011 at 8:00pm
Admission: $10.00 - Limited Seating RSVP to programming@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117
"You're born naked, the rest is Drag"
-Ru Paul Charles
Highlights Include:
Sinderella (B+W & Color, 1962)
This amateur film produced by "Lorelei" is a faithful reenactment of the Brother's Grimm Cinderella.. except with a handful of lovely drag queens playing all the parts. A rare document of the San Francisco drag scene in the early 60s, this gem is like a long-lost step sister to Jack Smith's Flaming Creatures. Don't miss the amazingly cheezy production values, awesome wigs, and high-handed bitch slapping that blows Disney right out of the water. Poor Sinderella's hair gets a fabulous makeover when she's transformed! In B+W and color.
Amour Pour Un Femme (B+W, 1950)
This burlesque-like comedy short reveals a lesbian encounter with another woman in the nightclub dressing room is less lesbian than it seems!
Black Cap Drag (Color, 1969)It's London, 1969 and the world is in full groovy swing. At the New Black Cap, two performers steal the show, and reveal themselves and their stories to the viewer. Full of heart as well as humor, fun and fabulousness, Black Cap Drag is a remarkable document of two men who can't wait to get dressed like Barbra and Marlene.
Behind Every Good Man… (B+W, 1966)
Decades before RuPaul became a household name and before the Stonewall riots that launched the gay rights movement, this doc short features an African American drag queen pushing gender roles in a society barely out of the repressive 1950s. This very rare film (possibly one of the first documenting a black gay male) directed by Nikolai Ursin, then a film student at the University of California, Los Angeles records our subject’s meditations on love, gay life in the early 1960s, and gender transgression. The film and its subject avoid period cliches about homosexuality and point to hopeful possibilities. “I’d like to live a happy life, that’s for sure,” he says, and one not only wants him to, but believes that it really could happen.
Plus! Tons of Vintage San Francisco Footage and a few more fabulous surprises!
Plus! Tons of Vintage San Francisco Footage and a few more fabulous surprises!