Live Nude Girls UNITE!
A documentary about strippers unionizing
University of Ottawa
Friday October 12, 2007
Screening begins 19h00
Venue: University Of Ottawa, MacDonald Hall Auditorium (MCD 146), 150 Louis Pasteur Street, Ottawa, Ontario
USA/2000/70 Minutes/English
This first person documentary follows Julia Query, lesbian/stand-up comedian/peepshow-stripper, and daughter of a feminist activist, on her raucous journey to help organize the only union of strippers in the United States. Shot on a variety of formats, Live Nude Girls Unite! weaves backstage and dancing footage with labor organizing, street protests, stand-up comedy and comic-book style "animation" making an intelligent and dramatic cutting-edge film.
Needing a job to support her comedy habit, Julia finds that the most lucrative work available to her is as an exotic dancer at San Francisco's notorious Lusty Lady Theater. Never shy about her body, she decides to give it a go. She finds a world full of tough, iconoclastic, independent and joyful women whom she quickly comes to love. But Julia learns that these powerful women are outraged at being exploited by club owners. The women complain of newly instituted stage fees which make dancers pay to work; of being asked to "date" the owners' friends, and of work that is becoming less like performing and more like prostitution every year.
When dancers discover that they are being covertly videotaped for amateur porn, they decide that enough is enough. Julia and her colleagues head for the Service Employees International Union. Management responds by hiring a notorious anti-union law firm.
So begins a battle that rocks the sex industry with street protests, lock-outs, and confrontations. Then Julia gets a call from the producers of the First International Conference on Prostitution inviting her to both present about the union and perform her comedy routine. After accepting the invitation, Julia discovers that her mother, Dr. Joyce Wallace, well-known for her pioneering work with prostitutes and AIDS, is also scheduled to present at the conference. In an amazing and painful "coming out" sequence, Julia reveals to her mother that she is a sex-worker fighting to help sex workers, similar to her mother's efforts to save street-working prostitutes. But Julia's mother sees them as on the opposite sides of the sex war debates that have rocked the feminist movement for decades. While Dr. Wallace ardently speaks about the victimization of the women she helps, an equally impassioned Julia jokes that as a professional dominatrix she is working for social justice. But Julia's joking around barely covers up the cracks occurring in the world around her. The union drive is far more difficult and complicated than imagined, spirits are low, and her mother, furious at Julia not only for being a stripper, but also for tainting her professional reputation with the stigma of a sex-worker daughter, is not speaking to her. Live Nude Girls UNITE! brings the parallel stories of unionizing and Julia's relationship with her mother through to their poignant resolution.
Executive Producer GINI RETICKER joined the team to guide LIVE NUDE GIRLS UNITE!through completion. Credits include: Executive Producer/Director THE HEART OF THE MATTER; premiered 1994 Sundance Film Festival, Freedom of Expression Award recipient; played at festivals worldwide including Berlin, Galway, Paris, Creitel, Sarajevo, Cairo, Tokyo, Beijing, Sao Paulo, and The Human Rights Watch Festival. Broadcast P.O.V. Producer/Director NEW SCHOOL ORDER; premiered 1997 Sundance Film Festival. National broadcast 1997. Editing credits include: ROGER & ME; SIS: THE PERRY WATKINS STORY, winner Best Video, 1994 San Francisco Gay & Lesbian Film Festival; THE ROMANTIC COMEDY, PBS American Cinema Series, National PBS Broadcast 1995; FIRE FROM THE MOUNTAIN, premiered at 1986 New York Film Festival, screened 1987 Sundance Film Festival, Emmy Nominee for 1987 P.O.V. broadcast. Post-Production Supervisor on 1999 Academy Award-nominated DANCEMAKER. Reticker recently received a Gracie Award for her work on women's issues on public television.
Producer/Co-Director JULIA QUERY is making her directorial debut on LIVE NUDE GIRLS UNITE! As performance artist and comic, she wrote and toured three solo hour-long performance pieces. She established a video collective in 1993 that produced short documentaries; was Associate Producer on "Dykes, Camera . . . Action!" about lesbian media activism; Consulting Producer for "All I Know: Women and Breast Cancer in Oregon." She founded the University of Oregon Queer Film and Video Festival. She supports herself as a stripper at the Lusty Lady.
Co-Director/Editor Vicky Funari is a film/videomaker whose work focuses on women's stories and questions of cultural and gender identity. Most recently she produced, directed and edited "Paulina," a non-fiction feature film about the life of a Mexican maid. "Paulina" was an IFP/IFFM No Borders Project in 1996, and premiered at the 1998 Sundance film festival, screened in the Berlin film festival's European Film Market as part of the IFP/AIM program, and is currently showing in festivals worldwide. "Paulina" won best documentary at the San Antonio Cine Festival, the nations' oldest Latino film festival. "Paulina" won Grand Jury prize for Best Bay Area Documentary at San Francisco International Film Festival. "Paulina" won the Hamptons' Film Festival/ Lifetime's Women's Director award. Funari also produced, directed and edited "Skin-Es-the Si-A" an 18 minute experimental film which explores the codification of the female body. "Skin-Es-the Si-A" won Honorable Mention at the 1996 Oberhausen International Short Film Festival and a Jury Award at the New York Expo of Short Film and Video and has screened at festivals on three continents. Cablecasts of "Skin-Es-the Si-A" and "Paulina" are upcoming. Funari began her film work in 1985 as Assistant Director of the fiction feature "Working Girls" directed by Lizzie Borden. Subsequent credits include producer and camera on "Alternative Conceptions" a half-hour documentary about lesbian mothers; editor and assistant editor on PBS documentaries; and camera on documentary and experimental woks. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Latino media arts organization Cine Acción. Funari also worked at the Lusty Lady, and her article about it is in the anthology "Whores and Other Feminists".
Annimator Isis Rodriguez was born in Los Angeles California and was raised in Topeka Kansas. Underdog, Snagglepuss, Josie and the Pussycats, and Scooby Doo, were some of her favorite cartoons that she liked to draw in the late 60's and early 70's. She became a surrealist painter and printmaker at the University of Kansas where she received her BFA in 1988. Shortly after, she attended the San Francisco Art Institute. For the past 10 years, she has developed unique characters and stories that are filled with symbolic and humorous interpretations of freedom, independence, and fantasy. Her images are inspired by her own adventurous experiences. She also has done numerous murals and has worked in a craft-type genre, including wood carving and quilting. Currently, Isis is living in San Francisco and is working on a comic book/ animation based on her cartoon character named "Little Miss Attitude."
Source: www.livenudegirlsunite.com/film.html
Movie reviews:
www.livenudegirlsunite.com/screenings.html
http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9501E5D6123EF933A15753C1A9669...
http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1803454250/info
www.rottentomatoes.com/m/live_nude_girls_unite
Written and Directed by
Julia Query
Vicky Funari
Edited by
Vicky Funari
Heidi Rahlmann Plumb
Produced by
Julia Query
John Montoya
Executive Producer
Gini Reticker
Co-Producers
Sarah Kennedy
Avilla Peterson
Associate Producers
Inka Petersen
CJ Roessler
Marisa Soghoian
Camera
Julia Query
John Montoya
Sarah Kennedy
Vicky Funari
Original Artwork by
Isis Rodriguez
Original Music
Allison Hennessy and Kali with Alex Kort
Blaise Smith and Dale Everingham
Khayree Shaheed
On-line Editor
Heather Weaver
Sound Design
Jennifer Ware
Re-Recording Mixer
Pete Horner
Sound Editing
Ethan Derner
Andrea Plastas
Cari Campbell
Barbara McBane
Titles and Graphics
Vicky Funari
Inka Petersen
James Green
Additional Editors
Sharon Franklin
Sarah Kennedy
Gretchen Stoeltje
Consulting Editor
Nathaniel Dorsky
Production Maven
Heidi Rahlmann Plumb
Assistant Producers
Elizabeth Cook
Lisa Cullinan
Lisa Foster
Sean McGinn
Melissa Standen
Assistant Editors
Bill Basquin
Julie Konop
Darcy McKinnon
CJ Roessler
Marisa Soghoian
Fundraising Trailer Editors
Karen Everett
Lara Maciejewska
Additional Camera
Atalanta
Hima B
Ann Chamberlaine
Vicente Franco
Sharon Franklin
"Jane"
Lisa Jones
Michael Moore
Avilla Peterson
Heidi Rahlmann Plumb
CJ Roessler
Shoshana Rosenfeld,
Liza Seybold-Dittmar
Gretchen Stoeltje
Kristina Zinnen
Sound Recordists
J.Bob Alotta
Mark Edelsberg
Elise Hurwitz
Jaime Kibben
Ray Rea
Megan Sheer
Jake Tornatsky
Danielle Tsuboi
Lighting
Shara "Chewy" Kane
Novella Smith
Michael Anthony Worrall
Transcribers and Loggers
Tanya Buckley
Douglas Conrad
Diane Dunn
Barbara Kiss
J.J. Walker
Still Photographers
Vivienne Maricevic
Phyllis Christopher
CJ Roessler
Karina Udelay
20/20 Footage courtesy
Barbara Walters, ABC News
Thanks to
Daisy Anarchy
Jon Axtel
Suzy Berger
Bernal Heights Catering
Johanna Breyer
Jessa Brie Berkner
Karen Castleman
Sophie Constantinou
David Chadwick
Chat House
C.L. Cole
Coco Club
Sarah K Conner
Danzine
Gionna Divine
Theresa Dulce
Galleria De la Raza
Dan Geller
Good Vibrations, www.goodvibes.com
Catherine Greenblatt and Stafford
Nina Hartley
Hanarchy Now
Shani Heckman
Dan "Ball of Energy" Holzner
Patti Hudson
John Hughes
Josie's Juice Bar and Cabaret
Shari Kizirian
Kris Kovick
Stephen LeBlanc
Karlyn Lotney
Marne Lucas
Heather McFarlin
Julie Mackaman
Barbara Malcolm
Macondo Café
John Muse
William Plumb
Rainbow Grocery‹a worker-owned cooperative
Renee Rivera
Diane Sabin
Happy Sanchez
Annie Sprinkle
Margo St.James
Marc Smolowitz
Zakyia Soghoian
Laura Trent
Barbara, Lance and Lisa Wallace
Heather Wiker
Jennifer Worley
Special Thanks to:
American Zoetrope
Charlotte and Bob Beyers
Scott Carroll
The Exotic Dancers Alliance
Amelia Ross-Gilson
Bob Hawk
The Institute for Community Health Outreach
Aryeh Kahn
Jaime Kibben
Muffie Meyer
James Montoya
Landon Moreland
Pix and Stones
Mike Scott
Howard Stein
A very special thanks to
all the workers who appeared in this film.
With funding and support from
Astraea National Lesbian Action Foundation
Kathleen Glynn and Michael Moore of
The Center for Alternative Media and Culture
Chicago Underground Film Fund
Fleishhacker Foundation
Pacific Pioneer Fund
Third Wave Foundation- The Funding Exchange
Threshold Foundation
Vanguard Foundation
Subsidized access to post-production facilities
provided by
The Bay Area Video Coalition
Post-production sound provided by
HomeGirls and American Zoetrope
"Who Owns It?"
Composed by Blaise Smith and Dale Everingham
featuring Suga T
"Tilliboyo"
Written by Foday Musa Suso
Performed by Kronos Quartet
Courtesy of Elektra Nonesuch
By arrangement with Warner Special Products
"Zapfenstreich" (Revery Dream)
Performed by
Art Shryer's Yiddish Orchestra
"Der Heisser" (The Hot One)
Performed by
Naftule BrandWein's Orchestra
"For Strippers Only"
Written by
Bill Grundy, Morris Levy and Sonny Lester
Performed by
Sonny Lester and his Orchestra
Courtesy of Rhino, EMI Longitude Music Co.
By arrangement with Warner Special Products
"Lonely Little G-String"
Written by Bill Grundy
Performed by
Sonny Lester and his Orchestra
Courtesy of Rhino, EMI Longitude Music Co.
By arrangement with Warner Special Products
"Avarice"
Written by Tony Rojas
Performed by Majority Whip
Used by Permission of Tony Rojas
Courtesy of Institutional Quality Records
"My Heart Breaks"
Written by Sonya Hunter
(copyright 1999 / BMI)
Performed by:
Michael Bluestein, Dan Foltz, Sonya Hunter,
Erik Pearson and Marty Wehner
Used by Permission of
Sonya Hunter/Honey Do Music
"fun, fun, fun"
Written by Ralph Carney and Stichman,
Performed by
Ralph Carney and Stichman,
Courtesy Birdman records
"I Took the $"
Written by BMI
Performed by She Mob
Courtesy of Spinster Playtime Records
"Wretched Queen"
Written and performed by
Trippy Nick and Random Rab
Used by permission of
Trippy Nick and Random Rab
Courtesy of Xalex Records
"Heaven Knows"
Written by Diana Dawn
Performed by
Dianna Dawn with Eye Level
Courtesy of Daina Dawn
For Sex Workers Everywhere
And Dr. Joyce Wallace
