Pride: A Celebration Of Queer Stories

June 1–26, 2023
This June, the JBFC celebrates LGBTQ+ stories with a selection of one-off screenings and events. In partnership with The LOFT, we are offering free, limited supply of tickets to enjoy these INCREDIBLE cinematic offerings!

Discover the black queer origins of rock n’ roll in Little Richard: I Am Everything, celebrate trans lives with a special Community Matters, and join George Mackay, Bill Nighy, and Imelda Staunton in the feel-good true story of British LGBT activists, Pride.

Plus relive iconic moments from queer cinema history with The Watermelon Woman & Funeral Parade of Roses.

JUNE 1: JBFC Pride parking lot party: Join The Pride Party as Jacob Burns Film Center takes it to the Street!  They're kicking off June with a street festivity that will include The LOFT!  We'll have a table, there will be food trucks and all kinds of goodies! The street party will follow the movie, LITTLE RICHARD: I AM EVERYTHING with a Q+A with director Lisa Cortés)

5:30pm JBFC Pride parking lot party (Media Arts Lab)

7:30pm Screening - Theater 1: Little Richard: I Am Everything - with 

9:08pm Q&A (with director Lisa Cortés) - Theater 1

Price $25 (members) $30 (non-members)

Lisa Cortés’ Sundance opening night documentary tells the story of the Black queer origins of rock n’ roll, exploding the whitewashed canon of American pop music to reveal the innovator – the originator – Richard Penniman. Through a wealth of archive and performance that brings us into Richard’s complicated inner world, the film unspools the icon’s life story with all its switchbacks and contradictions. In interviews with family, musicians, and cutting-edge Black and queer scholars, the film reveals how Richard created an art form for ultimate self-expression, yet what he gave to the world he was never able to give to himself.

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Limited Free Tickets are Available (limit 1 per registrant), to RSVP for them:

JUNE 7: Pride (2014) - with screening of short Incomplete with Sasha Korbut Q&A (director of Incomplete)

7:00pm Q&A (PRE-Screening of INCOMPLETE, Pre-Q&A w/ Sasha Korbut) Theater 1

7:30pm Screening of Pride (2014) Theater 1

Regular Pricing - $11 (members) $16 (non-members)

This event will include a screening of Sasha Korbut's short film INCOMPLETE, followed by a brief Q&A with Sasha & Chris Holliday, and then the screening of the film PRIDE.

TOTAL RUNTIME including Short, Q&A and feature: 150m (Runtime is approximate).

Pride (2014) is inspired by an extraordinary true story. It's the summer of 1984, Margaret Thatcher is in power and the National Union of Mineworkers is on strike, prompting a London-based group of gay and lesbian activists to raise money to support the strikers' families. Initially rebuffed by the Union, the group identifies a tiny mining village in Wales and sets off to make their donation in person. This touching comedy stars Bill Nighy (Living, Love Actually), Imelda Staunton (Vera Drake), Andrew Scott (Fleabag), and George Mackay (1917).

"The kind of hearty, blunt-force drama with softened edges that leaves audiences applauding and teary-eyed." Stephen Holden, New York Times

"Pride" is an unapologetic crowd-pleaser of a movie, but it has some potent points to make, and the reality of what happened has a power of its own." Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times.

"If Pride were a politician, you'd want to vote for it, march for it, and sign up to make calls for it." David Edelstein, Vulture.

INCOMPLETE (2023)

Incomplete tells the story of a man sharing a love letter about longing for someone he has never met. It explores one man's loneliness, and poses a question: do we need another person in life to feel complete or are we missing a connection with ourselves?

Moderator Chris Holliday

Guest Speaker Sasha Korbut

Guest Bio -

Sasha Korbut is a film producer, writer, dancer, and actor based in New York City. Korbut has studied at The Joffrey Ballet School and worked with leading dance companies in South Korea, China, Spain, and the U.S. He has contributed to numerous print and online magazines including OUT, Filmmaker Magazine, and Medium. As a freelance PR and outreach agent, he works with multiple distribution companies such as Kino Lorber, Mubi, Corinth Films, and Neon. He has been featured in HBO, The New York Times, The Village Voice, Mashable, and Time Out New York.

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Limited Free Tickets are Available (limit 1 per registrant), to RSVP for them:

June 14th Mutt (with shorts)

7:00pm Screening (with shorts) Theater 1

8:30pm Q&A (with director Vuk Lungulov-Klotz ) Theater 1

9:00pm Cocktail Reception Gallery

Free for Members

This event will include a screening of two short films from Juan Barquin (8 mins in total)

TOTAL RUNTIME including Shorts and feature: 95m (Runtime is approximate).

Special Pride Preview screening of Mutt - which took Sundance and Berlinale by storm!

Over the course of 24 breathless hours in New York City, twentysomething trans guy Feña (newcomer Lío Mehiel, winner of a Special Jury Award at Sundance for their performance) must contend with an onslaught of aggravations, surprise encounters, and emotional choices. Laundromats, subway turnstiles, and airport transfers are the hectic background to this emotional drama that overlaps past, present, and future.

Mutt earns its most difficult discussions through its tenderness toward each character’s struggle with the complexity of trans life, Latinx life in America, and human life at large.

Followed by a reception in the Jane Peck Gallery.

Moderator Abbey White

Guest Speaker Vuk Lungulov-Klotz

Guest Bio -

Vuk Lungulov-Klotz is a Chilean-Serbian filmmaker raised between Chile, New York City, and Serbia. He is an alum of the Sundance Institute Labs, the Tribeca Film Institute, and the Ryan Murphy HALF Initiative Program. As a transgender storyteller he hopes to expand queer narratives. His work focuses on intimate moments we often miss if we're not looking. His debut feature film, Mutt, premiered at Sundance 2023 and will be released in August.

Abbey White is an associate editor and news writer for The Hollywood Reporter’s digital team, where they also report, edit and web produce features spanning film, TV, awards, theater, animation, children's & family, inclusion and more. A Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY alum, they’ve been recognized as a 2022 Curve Emerging Journalist, ASME Awards finalist, National A&E Journalism Awards winner and GLAAD Media Award nominee, among other honors.

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Limited Free Tickets are Available (limit 1 per registrant), to RSVP for them:

June 20: The Watermelon Woman (with short - Home Movie)

7:00pm Screening Theater 2

Regular Pricing - $11 (members) $16 (non-members)

This event will include a screening of Home Movie (12 minutes)

TOTAL RUNTIME including short and feature: 102m (Runtime is approximate).

The Watermelon Woman

Re-released for its 20th anniversary in a pristine 2K HD restoration, The Watermelon Woman is the story of a 20-something black lesbian (played by director Cheryl Dunye) struggling to make a documentary about Fae Richards, a beautiful and elusive 1930s black film actress. A landmark of New Queer Cinema, it’s “funny and smart, full of astute observations about identity and history,” says the Village Voice. “Dunye’s audacious, joyous debut feature captures the process of falling hopelessly in love with the movies.”

Home Movie

Using her family’s home movies and her talent for parody, Jan Oxenberg gives herself a cheerful lesbian childhood. “The thing I liked best about being a cheerleader was being with the other cheerleaders . . . the football match was just an excuse.”

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Limited Free Tickets are Available (limit 1 per registrant), to RSVP for them:

June 26:Funeral Parade of Roses (with book event)

7:00pm Screening Theater 2

8:45pm Q&A (with author Karl Turner) Theater 2

9:15pm Book Signing/Sale Theater 2

Price $15 (members) $20 (nonmembers)

Long unavailable in the U.S., director Toshio Matsumoto’s shattering, kaleidoscopic masterpiece is one of the most subversive and intoxicating films of the late 1960s: a headlong dive into a dazzling, unseen Tokyo night-world of drag queen bars and fabulous divas, fueled by booze, drugs, fuzz guitars, performance art and black mascara. Stanley Kubrick cited the film as a direct influence on his own dystopian classic A CLOCKWORK ORANGE.

"A dizzying pop-art fantasia, Funeral Parade of Roses is a film that evades straightforward categorisation. Through a rapid-fire combination of melodrama, comedy, horror, documentary and experimental film, director Toshio Matsumoto’s freewheeling approach to both genre and form results in a film that gleefully disorientates without ever feeling disjointed." British Film Institute.

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Followed by a Q&A with Kyle Turner, author of 'The Queer Film Guide: 100 great movies that tell LGBTQIA+ stories'.

Starting in early cinema with trailblazers like Making a Man of Her and Different from Others, the list progresses through the eras, from Hitchcock’s Rope to cult classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show to today’s fast-growing list of queer films, including Carol, The Duke of Burgundy, and Moonlight. From lesser-known names to Academy Award winners, The Queer Film Guide offers a fresh take on what defines great cinema, lending a voice to the diverse creators and characters who’ve shaped the art form.

Copies of The Queer Film Guide will be available to purchase after the screening, courtesy of The Village Bookstore.

Moderator Monica Castillo

Guest Speaker(s) Kyle Turner

Guest Bio -

Kyle Turner is a freelance writer and editor based in Brooklyn, NY. His work has been featured in Slate, NPR, the Village Voice, GQ.com, and the New York Times. He is also the author of The Queer Film Guide: 100 Films That Tel LGBTIA+ Stories, out from Smith Street Books and Rizzoli on May 16.

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Limited Free Tickets are Available (limit 1 per registrant), to RSVP for them: