Shakedown
Director: Leilah Weinraub
Writer: Leilah Weinraub
Seen on: 30.11.2025

Content Note: (critical treatment of) racism

“Plot”:
Shakedown was a lesbian underground club in LA in the early aughts. This documentary chronicles its history, the people involved and the Black lesbian scene and culture itself.

Shakedown is a well-researched and well-told documentary that gives us an interesting look at a very particular slice of lesbian culture.

From what I gather, director Weinraub herself first frequented, then worked at Shakedown as a photographer and videographer. This explains the bounty of original film footage the film can draw on that capture the events at Shakedown directly, instead of just relying of the people who were present telling their version of events. (Of course, what we get is Weinraub’s version of events, I’m not saying that she somehow impossibly achieved objectivity.) Maybe my biggest criticism of the film, though, is that I had to learn this from texts written about the film and not from the film directly. It wouldn’t have hurt to have a little transparency there.

That being said, it is a fascinating into a world that I never would have learned about otherwise. As a white European, I was both intrigued and flabbergasted by the way these clubbings work. I have seen a couple of strip shows but nothing that was ever even close in terms of explicitness. And it also took me some time to realize that Shakedown was not a location but a group of people organizing clubbings at one location or another.

Of course, given that Shakedown was all about Black queer freedom, it is no surprise that they wouldn’t be left in peace. After a strong, joyful beginning, Weinraub manages to capture the sense of intrusion that comes with police scrutiny – and that ultimately spells the end of Shakedown, at least in that form.

Along the way, though, we get to meet a lot of interesting people who shaped and were shaped by that club, showing us that it made the world richer for existing.

Summarizing: worth seeing for sure.