Stormé: The Lady of the Jewel Box & Dreams Deferred: The Sakia Gunn Project

Monday, August 20, 2018

JP Howard presents:

STORMÉ: THE LADY OF THE JEWEL BOX (Michelle Parkerson, 1987) & DREAMS DEFERRED: THE SAKIA GUNN FILM PROJECT (Charles B. Brack, 2008)

Poet, mother, and educator JP Howard presents two rarely screened must-see films that offer contrasting images of black lesbian identity and experience. DREAMS DEFERRED tells the story of Sakia Gunn, a masculine-presenting teen who in 2003 was stabbed to death on the streets of Newark in a brutal act of hate. STORMÉ, meanwhile, offers a portrait of 1950s male impersonator, civil rights pioneer, and emcee of the legendary Jewel Box Revue: Stormé Delavarie. “Gunn’s death did not receive the same attention as Matthew Shepard,” Howard notes, while finding it “empowering to see Stormé, a biracial, butch-presenting lesbian, talk confidently about her life’s path.”

STORMÉ: THE LADY OF THE JEWEL BOX
Michelle Parkerson, 1987, 9 min.

DREAMS DEFERRED: THE SAKIA GUNN PROJECT
Charles B. Brack, 2008, 55 min.

Screening as part of our ongoing series with Queer|Art|Film for their season Black Summer Nights 2: Summer in the City.

• Running Time 64 minutes

IFC Center does not generally provide advisories about subject matter or potentially triggering content in films, as sensitivities vary from person to person. In addition to the synopses, trailers and other links on our website, further information about content and age-appropriateness for specific films can be found on Common Sense Media, IMDb and DoesTheDogDie.com as well as through general internet searches.