Pride is a Protest: Born in Flames & Gay USA, at Unit 2, Regent Trading Estate

Pride is a Protest: Born in Flames & Gay USA at Unit 3, Regents Trading Estate, Manchester, 28 August 2021, free entry - Visit now

As part of Pride is a Protest — a day dedicated to art, performance and protest exploring an alternative to mainstream Pride — local film programmers Above The Line have scheduled free screenings of Lizzie Borden’s Born in Flames and Arthur J. Bressan, Jr’s Gay USA.

Inkeeping with Pride is a Protest’s mission, the films are landmark titles in the history of queer cinema, but they are also spiky, rebellious and uncompromising.

Borden’s 1983 Born in Flames is a punky, documentary-style account of two feminist groups operating in a dystopian near-future version of New York City. Meanwhile Bressan, Jr’s documentary Gay USA is composed of footage shot at gay pride events across the United States in 1977, at a time when the movement was beginning to face organised backlash. 

Indeed, the films’ politically charged subject matter and DIY ethos matches that of Pride is a Protest. It feels both welcome and appropriate that they should be showing free of charge in a Salford warehouse behind Islington Mill.