Femme Fatale party is one of the highlights of NYC Pride festivities
Multiple locations
June 17-30, free – $300 and more
www.nycpride.org
This year’s pride festivities honor the fiftieth anniversary of Stonewall, which set the Gay Pride movement in motion in full force. There are some new events, while the March itself has changed its route, so pay close attention to the locations listed below. As always, the ticketed events and VIP treatment are selling out fast, so you better act quickly if you want to shake it up at some pretty wild gatherings. Also be on the lookout for the World Mural Project in all five boroughs and the Quilt Initiative, which displays portions of the AIDS Memorial Quilt in numerous places.
Monday, June 17
NewFest OutCinema, screening of Adam (Rhys Ernst, 2019), followed by a a Q&A with Ernst and members of the cast and a party, SVA Theatre, 333 West 23rd St., $30-$100, 7:00
Tuesday, June 18
NewFest OutCinema, screening of Invisible Women: The Story of Two Forgotten Revolutionaries (Alice Smith, 2019) and Deep in Vogue (Amy Watson & Dennis Keighron-Foster, 2019), followed by a a Q&A with the filmmakers, moderated by Twiggy Pucci Garçon, SVA Theatre, 333 West 23rd St., $30-$100, 7:00
Wednesday, June 19
NewFest OutCinema, screening of Wig (Chris Moukarbel, 2019), followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers, Lady Bunny, and others, SVA Theatre, 333 West 23rd St., $30-$100, 7:00
Friday, June 21
Family Movie Night, screening of Coco (Lee Unkrich & Adrian Molina, 2017), with field games and live entertainment, hosted by Miss Richfield 1981, Pier 45, Hudson River Park, free ($50 for VIP blanket seating), 6:30
PrideMarch will celebrate fiftieth anniversary of Stonewall this year
Saturday, June 22
CosPlay & Pride, sunset cruise with Aja and others, hosted by Petra Fried, Pier 40, Hudson River Park, 353 West St., $45, 6:00
Sunday, June 23
Pride Luminaries Brunch, Magic Hour Rooftop Bar & Lounge, 485 7th Ave., $85, 11:00 am
Monday, June 24
and
Tuesday, June 25
Human Rights Conference, with Raquel Willis, Janet Mock, and Tracey “Africa” Norman, New York Law School, 185 West Broadway, $30-$50, 9:00 am – 5:00 pm
Tuesday, June 25
GameChangers, panel discussion, Q&A, and reception with George Takei, Trace Lysette, Leyna Bloom, and others, SVA Theatre, 333 West 23rd St., $15-$35, 6:00
Wednesday, June 26
WorldPride Opening Ceremony, benefiting Ali Forney Center, Immigration Equality, and SAGE, with Cyndi Lauper, Billy Porter, Chaka Khan, Ciara, Daya, Todrick Hall, and others, Barclays Center, $45-$226, 7:00
Friday, June 28
Savor Pride, food-driven fundraiser, with dishes by chefs Renee Blackman, Julia Turshen, Alex Koones, Manuel González Charles, Lazarus Lynch, and more, God’s Love We Deliver, 166 Sixth Ave. at Spring St., $80-$125, 5:30
Rally: Stonewall 50 Commemoration, performers and speakers to be announced, Christopher St. & Waverly Pl., free, 6:00
Twenty-sixth annual PrideFest street fair takes place on June 30 on Fourth Ave.
Saturday, June 29
Youth Pride, for LGBTQIA+ and ally teens, with Ava Max, DJ Nhandi, Deetranada, Angelica Ross and Hailie Sahar from Pose, and more, SummerStage, Central Park, free, noon – 6:00 pm
VIP Rooftop Party, with DJs GRIND, Toy Armada, Ben Baker, and Kitty Glitter and more, the Park, 118 10th Ave., $100-$150, 2:00 – 10:00 pm
Teaze, with bklyn boihood, TRUUU, Set It Off, Rose Gold, Yellow Jackets Collective, and more, the DL, 95 Delancey St., $40-$80, 5:00 – midnight
Saturday, June 29
and
Sunday, June 30
Pride Island, with Grace Jones, Teyana Taylor, Pabllo Vittar, and more, Pier 97, Hudson River Park at Fifty-Ninth St. & West Side Highway, 2:00 – 10:00
Sunday, June 30
PrideFest, twenty-sixth annual street fair with music, food, merchandise, and more, featuring live performances by Lauren Jauregui, the Veronicas, Melanie C & Sink the Pink, and others, hosted by E. J. Johnson, Fourth Ave. between Union Square and Astor Pl., free, 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
The March, with grand marshals Phyll Opoku-Gyimah, Monica Helms, the Trevor Project, Gay Liberation Front, and members of the cast of Pose, Lavender Line from Twenty-Sixth St. & Fifth Ave., downtown to Washington Square Park and Stonewall National Monument, and back up to Twenty-Third St. & Seventh Ave., free, 12 noon
Femme Fatale, women’s party with DJs Kittens, Mary Mac, Bonnie Beats, Nikki Lions, and Lena, the Park, 118 10th Ave., $40-$65, 4:00 – midnight
Siren, with Mindy Jones, DJ Whitney Day, DJ Tatiana-Denver, and DJ MO-NYC, hosted by Crissa Ace and Kiyomi Valentine, Watermark, Pier 15, 78 South St., $45 – $275, 9:00 pm – 4:00 am
WorldPride Closing Ceremony, with live performances by Melissa Etheridge, Jake Shears, MNEK, The Prom, Deborah Cox, and more, hosted by Margaret Cho, Times Square, free, 7:00
About halfway through Unzipped, Douglas Keeve’s thrilling 1995 documentary, which follows fashion designer extraordinaire Isaac Mizrahi as he puts together his fall 1994 collection following a critical disaster, Mizrahi says, “Everything’s frustrating; every single thing is frustrating. Except designing clothes. That’s not frustrating. That’s really liberating and beautiful. I don’t know, being overweight and not being able to lose weight, you know, that’s a problem. Anything you’re really working hard at and that’s not working, that’s a problem. But frankly, designing clothes is never a problem.” Of course, the statement doesn’t exactly ring true as Mizrahi, usually with his trademark bandanna wound around his wild, curly hair, encounters his fair share of difficulties as he meets with Candy Pratts and André Leon Talley from Vogue and Polly Mellen from Allure, expresses his hopes and fears with Mark Morris, Sandra Bernhard, Eartha Kitt, and his mother, and works with such supermodels as Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Shalom Harlow, Linda Evangelista, Carla Bruni, Christy Turlington, and Amber Valletta. Along the way he makes endless pop-culture references, singing the theme song from The Mary Tyler Moore Show, citing scenes from The Red Shoes, Marnie, Valley of the Dolls, and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and using Nanook of the North and The Call of the Wild as creative inspiration.
Fiction and reality collide in kinky ways in Julian Shaw’s thriller Use Me, making its world premiere at the twenty-second annual Brooklyn Film Festival. New Zealand-born director Shaw initially set out to make a documentary about Ceara Lynch, a professional humiliatrix who welcomes people to her website by proclaiming, “Here you will find a wide array of fetish and femdom POV videos specially designed to exacerbate your inexplicable urge to have a pretty girl ruin your life.” Ultimately, he decided to create a fictionalized tale in which it is often difficult to tell what is real and what is not. Lynch makes her living by humiliating men, who pay for the privilege; the film’s original title was Ruin Me. Shaw and Lynch, and various other characters, play themselves as he delves into her salacious business of sexual obsession. She has a clear set of guidelines, but when they breach a few key ground rules, Shaw finds himself trapped in a dangerous nightmare involving Lynch, her client Luke Adore (Joseph Reitman), and her protégée Princess Cassie (Jazlyn Yoder).
Filmmaker Karen Kramer spent seven years on Renegade Dreamers, including four years following a group of young contemporary spoken word artists and protest singers. She could have done something better with her time. A longtime downtown New Yorker who made The Ballad of Greenwich Village in 2005, Kramer initially set out to make a documentary about the coffeehouse scene around MacDougal and Bleecker Streets in the 1950s and ’60s, and the sections of Renegade Dreamers about the post–World War II Beat poets and folk singers, including Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, Len Chandler, and others, as well as Woody Guthrie, are terrific, with rarely seen archival footage that is stirring and exciting. She speaks with such key figures as Wavy Gravy, Hettie Jones, Eric Andersen, Ronnie Gilbert of the Weavers, Maria Muldaur, David Amram, Izzy Young, Tom Paxton, and Richie Havens (some interview footage was completed for her previous film), who share intimate stories about their struggle against McCarthyism, the Vietnam War, anti-unionism, consumerism, and conformity. “They considered progressive thinking to be anti-American,” Peter Yarrow says of 1960s mainstream America, something that is true again today.
