the young people's professor

In 1990, Paris is Burning powerfully introduced the world to what had been until then a phenomenon known almost exclusively among gay African-Americans and Latinos in New York – drag balls. How Do I Look returns to the balls to show what has changed and what has remained the same over the years. Since 1997, director Wolfgang Busch and his collaborators have recorded this world to empower the community and to showcase their talents. Their film catches up with familiar faces – the Old School Legends - and introduces New School Legends, the inheritors of the various Houses who have continued to help shape this artform. How Do I Look is an uplifting and life-affirming celebration of a NYC artistic tradition.

Playing Sat, Jun 3, 8:00 pm
AMC Loews 34th St Theater 13

Despite their radically different backgrounds, young Black British boys Rag and Tag share a close bond - perhaps too close… Separated through circumstance, they reunite years later as young men to discover that their once-innocent desires have definitively shifted into an urgent need to be together. A trip to Tag’s native Nigeria liberates them, and they share their first physical encounter while also learning some surprising family secrets. After returning to London, the couple must reconcile their newfound love with pressures from family, friends, finances, and bigotry. Propelled by a fantastic hip-hop score, Rag Tag is an intricate, lyrical film about love and friendship set against a cultural backdrop that has never before been been seen in gay film.

Playing Fri, Jun 2, 5:30 pm
AMC Loews 34th St Theater 9

Playing Sun, Jun 4, 1:30 pm
AMC Loews 34th St Theater 10

Queer rappers performing queer hip-hop: welcome to the evolution of homohop, a living, breathing contradiction through which beats a thriving, passionate underground. Director Alex Hinton embarks on a three-year odyssey into queer hip-hop culture to uncover whether there is room for diversity in an industry plagued with rampant misogyny and institutionalized homophobia. Through candidly honest interviews, and melodic yet often provocative stage performances, these truly gifted queer rappers - fully representing the diversity of the LGBT community - reveal raw, intimate experiences of antigay violence, gender variance, and even suicide. Pick Up the Mic challenges notions of what mainstream hip-hop music and culture claim to represent, and embodies what it should be representing - unconditional acceptance through music.

Not Quite Right is centered on four very different brothers whose father has just cut off financial support. Jeremy, who already balances a girlfriend, an older mistress, and his own immaturity, concocts a questionable scheme to get money for rent. Not able to get support from his older brother, Nathan, a coke fiend, he instead draws in his insecure and mildly autistic brother Patrick to assist him. Meanwhile, the best-adjusted brother, William, a gay little person, seeks a boyfriend while putting up with the taunts of neighborhood punks Isaac and Evan, who have their own issues. Philip Schaff’s directorial debut is an unusually charming, honest, and darkly comic tale about social misfits trying to find happiness despite their circumstances.