Muff Dives: The D*ke Bar in Cinema

This series—an abbreviated version of a retrospective that first ran at Metrograph in New York City—is devoted to films that immerse viewers, if only for a scene or two, in social spaces that are now perilously close to extinction: nightspots catering to queer women. Some of these movies were shot, however briefly, in situ in actual legendary lez bars (all of which are now shuttered); others in wholly fabricated lavender boîtes. Whether real or fictional, these clubs abound with promise, unpredictability, lust and heartache—the inevitable result of bodies mingling, dancing, flirting and more in close quarters.