News

Like many of us stuck at home, moviedom — or our recent virtual version of it — has been rummaging through the archives intrigued by films it never quite made the time for. So consider the streaming of Leilah Weinraub’s “Shakedown” (which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in 2018) an example of a movie surfacing to the top when it likely deserved our attention from the get-go.

With archival images and footage the director-cinematographer shot over the span of a decade, “Shakedown” documents the life of the itinerant Los Angeles strip club of the title. The club-within-a-club catered to a black lesbian clientele during the ’90s and early aughts. In March, . (The site even hosted live chats with Weinraub.) “Shakedown” was subsequently offered to stream via the subscription-based Criterion Channel.

Okay, maybe a spit-take feels warranted: an adult entertainment online depot and a cinephile hub, really!? The overlap likely says something...

First stop Pornhub, next stop Criterion Channel. The Canadian pornography website will release Leilah Weinraub’s art film “Shakedown,” a narrative non-fiction film about a string of pop-up lesbian strip clubs in Los Angeles in the early 2000s. The film has been looking for a home for many years, and has only screened a handful of times, including the 2017 Whitney Biennial, the 68th Berlin International Film Festival, Tate Modern, and MoMA PS1. “Shakedown” was created from over 400 hours of footage that Weinraub has collected over the past 15 years, incorporating live tapes from the strip club, backstage videos, archival material, flyers, and interviews.

Per the official synopsis: “Capturing the early-aughts underground Los Angeles Black lesbian owned and operated strip club from which the film gets its name, ‘Shakedown’ chronicles the personal and professional relationships of the club’s female performers, the Shakedown Angels. Weinraub maps out an all cash economy run...