MQFF Midsumma Movies: The Wiz

MQFF brings you a sizzling weekend of the newest and most fabulous queer cinema

This landmark 1978 film adaptation of the Broadway musical of the same name is an all-Black, Afrofuturist reimagining of The Wizard of Oz – and how! With our queen, Diana Ross (soon to record “I’m Coming Out”) as Dorothy, heading an all-star cast including a teenaged, pre-solo career Michael Jackson, legendary singer, actor and civil rights activist, Lena Horne, America’s “poet laureate of television", Nipsey Russell and iconic comedian Richard Pryor – that’s how!

The legendariness far from ends there, mind you – produced by Universal Pictures and Motown Productions, The Wiz was scored by 28-times(!) Grammy Award-winner Quincy Jones, and boasts a soundtrack of glorious gospel, soul and R&B-infused bangers. Director Sidney Lumet – ever one of the most socially engaged of Hollywood filmmakers, known for 12 Angry Men (1957) and Network (1976) – was among the first Hollywood filmmakers to provide sympathetic, nuanced representations of out gay/bisexual and trans characters in 1975’s Dog Day Afternoon. Here he piloted the production of a film that “in the ‘Emerald City Sequence’ alone has informed everything from the black queer ballroom scene to Béyonce” (Gerrick D. Kennedy, Los Angeles Times).

• Director: Sidney Lumet
• Country: USA (1978)
• Rating: G