Reel Party: A Queer Film Party for Anyone Who Likes Film and Fun

REEL is a new bimonthly event series for the LGBT community and friends—hell, anyone who likes film. Expect more than just film showings, however; come party!

Doors open at 7:30 p.m. Evening kicks off (8 p.m.) with a some comedy foreplay provided by the unparalleled Kristen Becker.

Ticket prices: $8 general, $6 students & seniors, $5 Hallwalls members. Cash bar.

The bi-monthly event—which is meant to be an alternative to the bar scene—kicks off on Friday, February 21st at 8pm at Hallwalls. While the evening is centered around a film of interest to the community, other programming features—from live performances to on-site participation of LGBT-friendly businesses—will be blended in to the evening to offer an interesting, well-rounded experience to attendees.

Sarah Bishop, Paul Morgan, and Frits Abell have partnered to produce this series. Hallwalls Arts Center has stepped up as a partner and host.

The first film in the series is the 1970's seminal classic The Boys in the Band, which has been likened to American cinema's very own Birth of a Queer Nation. There's a self-conscious awkwardness in looking back at what is so sartorially and stylistically 'dated', but the films raw emotions and rapier wit are timelessly enduring. The Boys was a watershed moment in American cinema and Queer film culture built on the momentum of the 1969 Stonewall Riots.

The second film in the series, Shortbus, hitches its caboose to the sexual freedom train that was building a full head of steam in the 60's and 70's, but was tragically derailed by the epic game changer AIDS. Refreshingly absent from this film are the reactions that overshadowed all aspects of human sexuality in the wake of the AIDS crisis, but especially Queer sexuality. The John Cameron Mitchell-directed film revolves around a sexually diverse ensemble of colorful characters trying desperately to connect in New York City—their journey is simultaneously frank, unapologetic, self critical, innocent, erotic, at times cynical, but in the end, celebrates the unique and precious diversity of the individual.

The third film will be But I'm a Cheerleader, the 1999 satirical romantic comedy film directed by Jamie Babbit is set in a stylized technicolor sleep-away "conversion therapy" camp. The film is a camp glimpse at the schizophrenic aspect of American culture in which sexuality is simultaneously glorified and reviled in equal measure. Adolescents and adults comically struggle to make sense of impossibly conflicting peer pressures, conditional family love, religious dogma, and lockstep suburban convention against the tableau of our hypersexualized media culture.

The final film of the series Wigstock: the Movie, is a 1995 documentary film by Barry Shils that focuses on the annual drag music festival that was held in New York City's East Village through the 1980s and 1990s. The annual drag music festival was a "Woodstock meets Broadway" parody, and a Tompkins Square Park Labor Day tradition spanning more than a decade. Performers over the years included Ru Paul, Lypsinka, Dean Johnson, Debbie Harry, Lady Miss Kier, and Kenmore, New York's own — the late and much beloved Michael "Baby" Gregor as his rock-diva-drag-persona "Jelly Bean Joplin".

Note: Wherever possible, all efforts have been made to obtain and pay for nontheatrical licensing permission for all films to be screened in this series of one-time public screenings.

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