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Beyond ‘There’s Always a Black Issue, Dear’ (#)

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Cast of Black Issue

From dancing schoolboys to strutting the runways with Michael Clark, this documentary celebrates the histories of the black queer club kids of 1980s London.

Creating their own identities in a time when if you were black you could either be Reggae or Soul, these are the untold stories of dancers, performers and creatives who formed new ways of expression in London’s nightclubs. By looking at how the black queer community re-imagined gender and black identity against a background of Thatcher’s Britain, this documentary sheds light on the legacy of London’s black queer spaces and the people who made them.

 

Tagged with: Art & design Cinema Michael Clark More...

UK 2019 Dir Claire Lawrie 35 min

This event is programmed to coincide with our Michael Clark: Cosmic Dancer exhibition

Biographies

Les Child

Les Child's career in dance and choreography has spanned five decades. Trained at Ballet Rambert, Les was a principal dancer in many dance companies including The Lindsay Kemp Company and The Michael Clark Company. Les formed the House of Child in the late 1980s, the UK’s first Vogueing dance group. His ongoing career as a choreographer sees him working in fashion, theatre and film with some of the world's most well-known artists, including, Boy George, Eartha Kitt, The Pet Shop Boys and the Rolling Stones' as well as brands such as Burberry, Gucci and Alexander McQueen. Les Child lives and works in London.

Claire Lawrie

Claire Lawrie was a part of the club scene in London and New York. She was a model with Z agency and performed with the Neo Naturists and the Mathew Hawkins Ballet company. She taught herself photography, later graduating with a degree in Photography from The London College of Communication. Her work has been collected by the Birth Rites Collection and she has won the Bartur, Life Framer and Portrait of Britain awards as well as being featured in Photoworks Annual and the Brighton Biennial. Her first film Beyond ‘There’s always a black issue, Dear’ is the winner of The Queer Vision Film Festival and the Iris Prize 2018. She is currently studying an MFA Fine Art at Central Saint Martins in London.

madison moore

madison moore is a DJ and assistant professor of Queer Studies in the Department of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. madison is the author of Fabulous: The Rise of the Beautiful Eccentric (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018), a cultural analysis of fabulousness. He has performed at venues including the Perth Festival, American Realness, Performance Space Sydney, the Dallas Museum of art and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. madison is currently at work on a new book project on club scenes and queer of colour undergrounds. 

‘A new documentary finally gives credit to the black queer people who built British nightlife‘
GQ
‘These are the black, queer trailblazers who grew up in London in the Sixties and Seventies, children of the Windrush generation, whose voices aren’t celebrated enough in the history of queer culture‘
Wylde Mag
‘Pioneers who shaped our popular culture more than they’d care to admit, but much much more than current cultural historians and commentators have acknowledged‘
BlackOut UK

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