The vitals:
7:00 ~ Doors
7:30 ~ CHOCOLATE BABIES

Pitched as a "comedy drama about HIV-positive Black and Asian drag queens who become political terrorists and kidnap a closeted conservative politician," writer-director Stephen Winters’ feature debut went largely unnoticed upon its 1996 release despite a critically acclaimed festival run. More incisively, the film’s vital subtext around the marginalization of black and brown radicalism, the stigma of addiction, and the politically fraught intersections within queer activism (dark-skinned versus light-skinned, femme versus masc, older versus younger) was widely misunderstood. But, a 2021 Criterion Channel release and a 2023 4K restoration by Frameline have helped re-contextualize CHOCOLATE BABIES as an essential classic of New Queer Cinema. Edited in the frenetic style of a golden-era ‘90s music video and shot in just three weeks on candy-colored Fuji Film (preferred by Winters over Kodak for its superior treatment of black and brown skin), the film also stands as one of Black cinema’s most innovative and eternally relevant political satires. Drawing from Winters’ experiences in ACT UP Chicago and the Black nationalism movement, its brash balance of raucous ballroom humor and searing emotional rawness plants a flag as an unabashedly Black—and unapologetically vibrant—take on the AIDS crisis in a sea of white-male-lensed tearjerkers.  
- Graham Cumberbatch

SEE YOU AT THE MOVIES
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