Saturday Church

Last evening I watched the movie Saturday Church. It came out three years ago. I think it appeared in area movie theaters, but for such a short time I missed it. At the time the NPR program 1A did a movie club program on it, though starting by saying here be spoilers. So that episode went into my browser tabs, then into browser history. The movie is about Ulysses, who is 14 and black. He likes wearing his mother's shoes, which his conservative aunt wants to stop. Much of the story is him finding his community and he does in what is called Saturday Church. The film could be called a musical, though there are only a few songs (some with dancers!) in its 1:20 runtime. I recommend this one, even though the lead actor at times seems a bit wooden. Featured in the film is a dance contest, with the participants doing the same vogue dancing I saw the youth do at the Ruth Ellis Center here in Detroit. There really is a Saturday Church. It is a place for transgender kids run by St. Luke in the Fields in West Village, NYC. It looks like it offers some of the services as Ruth Ellis Center – food, clothing, a place to shower, access to a counselor, a place to hang out and vogue. A place to be who they are. Alas, only one day a week. So, back to the 1A episode about the movie (and remember, there are spoilers). The host in this episode is Joshual Johnson, who is black and gay. The audio is 36 minutes. The guests in this episode are John Horn, part of the regular 1A movie club, the writer and director of the movie Damon Cardasis, lesbian writer Danielle Hilborn, and Morgan Givens, a black trans man. Johnson says a main theme of the movie is being who you are up against being who your family wants you to be. Horn gave the movie a score 4.5 of 5, Hilborn gave it 4 of 5, Givens gave it 4 of 5. Rotten Tomatoes gave it 91/100. Cardasis told his story. He’s gay and his mother is an Episcopal priest. This was not a conservative religion. She is progressive. He found out about Saturday Church and volunteered for a while. He saw the contrast between their lives and the energy they put into vogueing (and at REC they put a lot of energy into it). And Ulysses is based on a real person he met there. Many in the cast were from the LGBT community, many had not acted before. This film launched a couple of them into the show Pose to become much better known. The dance contest in the movie is based on houses and ball culture. The majority of homeless youth are LGBT and a majority of those are black. They form “houses” to take care of each other. Each house has a person designated as father and as mother. Houses compete at ball events, with the runway, dancing, and costumes with prizes awarded. The costumes are sometimes made with minimal means. Givens confirmed he was part of the ball culture. I’ve heard of the houses at the Ruth Ellis Center. I’ve heard of youth indicating this other person is a parent of a house. I heard the director of the drop in center (where I volunteered) refer to herself as a house mother. Horn said the songs gave us a chance to see the way Ulysses wanted to see the world, in contrast to the way the world was. He thought they were really important to the story. The movie was released both in theaters and through streaming (remember, three years ago). Though that limited which theaters would book it, many smaller towns wouldn’t book it anyway and the kinds of people depicted in the film may not want to be seen in a theater watching it.