Category: Documentary

Go on tour with the drag wrestling collective ‘Chokehole’ in this fabulous documentary

Chokehole: Drag Wrestlers do Deutschland tells the story of how one disenfranchised group of queer performers defeated all the odds to create a wildly compelling theatrical show.

One hot summer night in New Orleans, a popular drag collective decided to stage a wresting night. Dressing as their vibrant alter-egos, they proceeded to beat the living daylights out each other while the audience collectively lost their minds. That night, the wrestling collective ‘Chokehole’ was born.

From Yony Leyser, the filmmaker behind Desire Will Set You Free and Queercore: How to Punk a Revolution, this new 22-minute documentary follows the group as they take their show to Germany.

The film observes the artists both in and out of drag, sharing their larger-than-life and theatrical alter egos while displaying the unique vulnerabilities that lie behind each character. This film explores their loud, vibrant personas alongside their heart-breaking personal stories – and the adversity they’ve had to overcome.

We learn how each character copes with love, sex, transitions, post-trauma and socioeconomics while getting a glimpse into their fantastical, vividly realized world – which is as much an escape for the artists as it is for the audience.

Watch a short teaser trailer for Chokehole: Drag Wrestlers do Deutschland below. The documentary is now streaming on Dekkoo.

Get ready to go ‘Deep in Vogue’ with this documentary about the Manchester ICONS Ball

Over the course of one year, British documentary filmmakers Dennis Keighron-Foster and Amy Watson developed relationships with the house mothers and members of the local Manchester drag community – charting the buildup to the wild and wonderful ‘Manchester ICONS Vogue Ball.’

Deep in Vogue celebrates the colorful, emotional, political and deeply queer stories of the vogue scene in the United Kingdom and the many talented people involved in the community.

Synonymous with the gay ballrooms of ‘80s New York, this documentary asks why we need Vogue in Manchester now more than ever. While focusing their cameras around the Manchester ICONS Vogue Ball, the filmmakers examine important themes – like the disenfranchisement of black youth and the often reductive ways in which gay subcultures become commercialized.

Offering a deep and candid look at one welcoming community, Deep in Vogue is ultimately about people coming to love and accept themselves while finding a new family – and putting on a hell of a show in the process.

Watch the trailer for Deep in Vogue below. The documentary is now streaming on Dekkoo.

A group of hunky gay athletes get personal in the short sports documentary ‘Soccer Boys’

Years ago, a group of athletic gay friends in Brazil got together to play soccer. After founding the team, they never could have imagined the popularity that would soon come their way.

There is now an entire gay football league in Brazil, consisting of eighty teams and a legion of fans. They even have national playoffs.

In the short documentary Soccer Boys, filmmaker Carlos Guilherme Vogel focuses his lens on the BeesCats Football Club as they prepare to compete in the upcoming Diversity Cup.

In candid interviews, the players discuss important issues regarding homosexuality in sports and homophobia in contemporary society.

The film closely follows two players on the first gay football team in Rio de Janeiro, who explain how joining the team has changed their lives for the better.

Soccer Boys is a touching tribute to gay athletes, offering inspiring messages about activism, self-realization, gay pride and following your dreams, wherever they may lead you.

Watch the trailer for Soccer Boys below. The full 14-minute documentary is now streaming on Dekkoo.

Filmmaker Victoria Linares Villegas explores personal family history in this unique docudrama

A revelation about her family connection to an influential figure sets filmmaker Victoria Linares Villegas on her own path of playful self-discovery in this fascinating and deeply personal new docudrama.

It Runs in the Family begins when Villegas discovers she is related to Oscar Torres, a little-known Dominican director. She soon embarks on a cinematic excavation of his role in Caribbean fiction and leftist movements during the authoritarian 1940s.

Through her research, she pieces together a portrait of his creative and political legacy while breaking down the boundaries between his story and her own ambitions as an image-maker. She brings Torres’ work back to life through a series of elaborate re-stagings of his unproduced screenplays, with members of her family stepping in as actors.

Through this process of playful discovery, Villegas poses questions about the Dominican Republic’s political history, transgenerational memory and queer erasure.

A film full of heart, It Runs in the Family is a bold first feature from an exciting new voice in nonfiction filmmaking.

Watch the trailer for It Runs in the Family below. The film is now available on Dekkoo.

Author and performer E. Patrick Johnson challenges Southern stereotypes in the documentary ‘Making Sweet Tea’

Giving voice to a population too rarely acknowledged, researcher and performer E. Patrick Johnson’s 2008 novel “Sweet Tea” collected more than 60 life stories from black gay men who were born, raised and continue to live in the South.

Based on two years of ethnographic research, the book offered a window into the ways black gay men negotiate their identities, build community, maintain friendship networks and find partners – often in spaces that appear to be anti-gay.

A hit at countless film festivals around the country, the profoundly moving new documentary Making Sweet Tea follows Johnson as he travels to North Carolina, Georgia, New Orleans and Washington, D.C. in an effort to come to terms with his past and reconnect with some of the men he interviewed for the book. Johnson also transformed the book into several staged plays over the course of a decade.

Making Sweet Tea combines performance footage with interviews of the men, showing how they have changed since – and been changed by – their depictions in his book and plays. The film covers the subtle complexities of Johnson’s relationships with these men, with his family and with his hometown in North Carolina. It also restages Johnson’s performances of the men’s narratives in their homes, in their churches and at their jobs, sometimes with them directing him or even participating in the scene.

Blurring the line between art and life, Making Sweet Tea offers a glimpse into the lives of people not often given a platform to speak and demonstrates how research, artistry and real life converge.

Watch the trailer for Making Sweet Tea below. The film is now available on Dekkoo.

Short Film Spotlight: Campfire

There are thirty-some LGBTQ campgrounds in America – many of which started in the 1980s at the height of the AIDS epidemic as refuges for urban gay men and as meeting places for rural (often closeted) men from conservative areas.

In the summer of 2022, author, filmmaker and former New York Times journalist Austin Bunn decided to make a documentary about Hillside, one of the oldest gay campgrounds, located in the mountains of Pennsylvania.

After weeks of interviews, he found that some men were only willing to talk off the record. In an effort to capture their transformational experiences, he created a composite character from their stories and filmed Campfire, a narrative/documentary hybrid.

This award-winning film follows a married dairy farmer who travels to a gay campground in rural Northeast Pennsylvania in search of the man he fell in love with 30 years earlier. Along his journey, he discovers that the past is not done with him yet.

Unfolding in the real location, during one weekend, this inventive and deeply poignant film features six permanent residents of Hillside along with two professional actors and dozens of actual campers – who just happened to be there at the right time – serving as extras.

Check out the poster for Campfire below. A hit with audiences at film festivals all over the country, this unique short film is now available on Dekkoo.