Queens Drive-In: Do the Right Thing

With Danny Aiello, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Giancarlo Esposito, Spike Lee, Bill Nunn, John Turturro. One of the most aesthetically accomplished and intentionally incendiary of all American films, Spike Lee’s full-throttle portrait of a particularly eventful, hot summer day in the life of a Bed-Stuy neighborhood is a remarkable dramatization of race relations in America. The phenomenal cast (including Aiello as pizza shop owner Sal, Lee as delivery boy Mookie, and Davis as an apartment-stoop prophet), the endlessly inventive visuals, and the charged political discussion made this an epochal cultural moment that retains its extraordinary power to this day.

Baby is a queer, coming-of-age love story that confronts themes of LGBTQ identity and toxic masculinity by introducing us to the world of Ali, a Dominican-American teenager from the Bronx. Shot stylistically as narrative cinema verite, Baby is as much an ode to New York City and to the rawness of teen-hood as it is a tender portrait of a young person coming into their own queerness and desire.

Martyna Starosta’s Elevator Pitch depicts the subway as an absurd obstacle course—and reveals a system that shuts many out of cities in motion. 22-year-old mother Malaysia Goodson reportedly died while carrying her baby and stroller down a set of subway stairs. The Manhattan station, like hundreds of others in New York City, lacked an elevator. Her death prompted an outcry from disability advocates and Goodson's loved ones, who urged the city to make the subways one-hundred percent accessible for all.

Dancers Quetzal Arias, Selina Hack, and Gianna Digirolamo, dressed in red, perform rhythmically and abstractly on a Bed Stuy rooftop.

Shaq, a young man grappling with depression, returns to his New Jersey hometown, where his exploration of grief and brotherhood transforms into the imagining of an inner life.

As dancer Malcolm-x Betts moves, digital lines track his sway. Made in collaboration with POETECHS, an anti-oppressive social work practice and art studio founded by Marcus Brittain Fleming.

Esneider Arevalo, founder of Culinary Backstreets, takes us through Queens as he tastes the delicious cuisine of the neighborhood’s independent and family-owned restaurants while he reflects on the economic and social impact of the Coronavirus crisis.

Sunday is a slice-of-life relationship story about a young couple's last night together in New York City before they're forced apart.