Acting
Pulling directly from the underground ballroom community, voguing teams (aka "houses") must compete in unbelievable balls and showcase sickening fashion in order to achieve "legendary" status.
25 years after Paris is Burning, we dive back into the fierce world of voguing battles in the Kiki scene of New York City, where competition between Houses demands leadership, painstaking practice, and performances on point. A film collaboration between Kiki gatekeeper, Twiggy Pucci Garçon, and Swedish filmmaker Sara Jordenö, we’re granted exclusive access into this high stakes world, where tough competitions act as a gateway into the daily lives of LGBTQ youth of color in NYC. The new generation of ballroom youth use the motto, “Not About us Without Us”. Twiggy and Sara’s insider-outsider approach to their stories breathes fresh life into the representation of a marginalized community who demand visibility and real political power.
Originally released in 1998, "Icy Lake" is one of only three recordings by Dat Oven, a NYC-based house duo made up of Jeffery Gratton and Shunji Morawaki. Icy Lake connects the dots between legendary but oft-forgotten moments in 90s nightlife, vogue/ballroom culture, grime's Eskibeat movement, and the radical club constructions of the NS/F2M families. This documentary documents the re-discovery and re-release of the record by on a co-release on Fade To Mind and Night Slugs.
Exploring fashion’s uneasy relationship with ballroom and black queer culture, SHOWstudio followed the House of Gorgeous Gucci as they compete in the category of ‘Fashion As A House.' Styled by Anna Trevelyan, the New York City icons donned haute couture garments from the fashion world’s top ateliers. The documentary forces the viewer to embody the other, the outsider. Capturing nightlife scenes and interviews with each participant, this film unearths the core values of ballroom and the intensity of competition, along with questions on the semiotics of high fashion’s appropriation of queer culture.
