Film: The Vito Project LGBTQ+ Film Club presents Girl Stroke Boy (1971)

About Film: The Vito Project LGBTQ+ Film Club presents Girl Stroke Boy (1971)

Following the success of its sold-out season on Classic Hollywood ‘Camp’, THE VITO PROJECT QUEER FILM CLUB presents its new season. DRESSED TO THRILL: A Series of Films Exploring Dress Code and Gender Expression celebrates characters that use dress as a means to subvert gender and societal rules. We will journey through different decades and countries to explore narratives that defy, confront, or expose gender expectations. We invite you to dress to impress, open the celluloid closet with us, and marvel at a line-up of magnificent misfits – be they anarchic, playful, detestable, or absolutely fabulous.

Featuring surprisingly progressive reflections on gender identity for its time, Girl Stroke Boy is a rarely seen comedy of manners that stands as one of the most forward-thinking British films of the 1970s.

Based on David Percival’s acclaimed play Girlfriend, this is a is a one-of-a-kind comedy that has remained largely obscure partly due to its homophobic reception by critics at the time of its release.

Liberal middle-class parents (played with affability and perfect comic timing by British acting legends Joan Greenwood and Michael Hordern) begin to worry when their son (Clive Francis), who has shown no prior interest in women, brings home Jo his elegant, flamboyant, and androgenous fiancée of West Indian heritage. Confused by Jo’s gender, they devise numerous tactics to figure out who Jo actually is – only to have their world rocked by new lessons in love, gender and sexuality. At the centre of Girl Stroke Boy is Peter Straker in a pioneering performance as British cinema’s first queer leading role to be played by a black actor. Directed with an affectionate, light touch by Bob Kellet and featuring a superb cast, this small gem is the rare 1970s movie that dares to imagine a happy future for its queer characters, and that alone makes it prime for rediscovery.

Event format: Doors open one hour before start times for socialising. Screening is preceded by an introduction and followed by a Q&A. Drinks and homemade food by the Electric Elephant Café available.

About The VITO Project Queer Film Club: The popular series has been running at The Cinema Museum since 2015, promoting a safe space to promote dialogue between different generations of LGBTQ+ people, allies, and film lovers. It takes its name after Vito Russo (1945-1990), New York-native a gay rights activist, film historian and author best known for his book The Celluloid Closet, a ground-breaking chronicle of the LGBTQ+ experience in film. Russo famously screened movies in a space for them to be discussed and debated, and the Project continues to honour his tradition at the historic Cinema Museum London.

Doors open at 17.00, for a 18.00 start.

Refreshments will be available in our licensed cafe/bar.