Show Girls

Show Girls

| 52 min

Show Girls celebrates Montreal's swinging Black jazz scene from the 1920s to the 1960s, when the city was wide open. Three women who danced in the legendary Black clubs of the day - Rockhead's Paradise, The Terminal, Café St. Michel - share their unforgettable memories of life at the centre of one of the world's hottest jazz spots. From the Roaring Twenties, through the Second World War and on into the golden era of clubs in the fifties and sixities, Show Girls chronicles the lives of Bernice, Tina and Olga - mixing their memories with rarely seen footage of the era. Their stories are told against a backdrop of the fascinating social and political history that made Montreal a jazz and nightclub hotspot for decades. It is a story of song and dance, music and pride.

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Show Girls, Meilan Lam, provided by the National Film Board of Canada

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Credits
  • director
    Meilan Lam
  • producer
    Tamara Lynch
    Barrie Angus McLean
  • executive producer
    David Verrall
    Barrie Angus McLean
  • script
    Sugith Varughese
  • camera
    Wolf Koenig
  • editing
    Yurij Luhovy
  • sound editing
    Chris Crilly
  • re-recording
    Geoffrey Mitchell
  • narrator
    Anthony Sherwood
  • participation
    Tina Baines Brereton
    Olga Spencer Foderingham
    Bernice "Bunny" Jordan Whims

  • Jaiwax

    Well made educational movie. I admire the Black women for their talent to this day, but you can see that there must have been a dirty side to the piety of the underground railroad bringing in Black people from persecution in the States, especially at time when Montreal had the only legal bars in North America.

    Jaiwax, 13 Nov 2017

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