MOVE YA BODY – THE BIRTH OF HOUSE

MOVE YA BODY - THE BIRTH OF HOUSE
Elegance Bratton | USA 2025 | 92' | English OF

In the chaos of Disco Demolition Night - an unfortunate publicity stunt during the intermission of a baseball game at Chicago's Comiskey Park stadium in which disco and soul records were publicly destroyed, which in retrospect is less reminiscent of a happening than a book burning - a teenage usher named Vince Lawrence witnessed intense resentment against disco, a sound that symbolized freedom and self-confidence not only for himself.

Undeterred by the hostility, Vince used his savings to buy a synthesizer and - and ventured into the underground temple The Warehouse, where Frankie Knuckles played revolutionary dance music. He teamed up with Jesse Saunders to form Z Factor and captured this particular Chicago sound on vinyl for the first time: their track "On and On" became the first house anthem on record and sparked a movement that turned a local DIY culture into a global phenomenon. From the rough streets of Chicago's South Side to festival stages worldwide, Vince's story is a heartening testament to how a dream born from the ashes of aggressive rejection could establish an electrifying genre that continues to connect people around the world to this day.

This is not only a commercial success story, but also a story of unlikely crossovers (e.g. with very white punk), but above all the story of a liberation and an important starting point for the visualization of a self-determined LGBTQ+ community, garnished with atmospherically dense play scenes and told as personally as vividly by Lawrence himself and several comrades-in-arms and other contemporary witnesses, including Marshall Jefferson, Lori Branch, Lady D, "Screaming" Rachel Cain, Kevin Aviance, Lena Waithe.

All films & dates: www.unerhoert-filmfest.de