Reel Queer Film Series presents Dark and Lovely, Soft and Free
The Reel Queer Film Series at Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center presents a free screening of Dark and Lovely, Soft and Free on November 14th at 6:30pm. A talkback with Dr. Sirry Alang and dessert reception will follow.
Dark and Lovely, Soft and Free follows a network of queer hairstylists and their friends through small towns, rural areas, and urban peripheries in South Africa. A project of the Gay and Lesbian Archives of South Africa, the 2000 film was linked to co-director Graeme Reid’s doctoral research on hair salons as gay social and cultural spaces.
Presenter Zakhi Radebe, and behind-the-scenes directors Paulo Alberton and Reid travel thousands of miles through the provinces of Gauteng, Mpumalanga, the Free State, the Eastern Cape, and KwaZulu-Natal. On this road trip they and the audience meet stylists who are also preachers, chorists, traditional healers, beauty queens, and socialites. Through them, viewers discover the creative possibilities for creating queer spaces in the South African countryside. The documentary provides a vision of acceptance and celebration, in contrast to the dominant homophobia in much of sub-Saharan Africa.
Dark and Lovely, Soft and Free is a co-production of Franmi Productions (Brazil), the Gay and Lesbian Archives of South Africa, and Vidiola.
View the trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cq4v7Dbu-DA
This is a sober social event at Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center. No alcohol will be served.
The Reel Queer Film Series is supported in part by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.
