BALLS TO THE WALL

With so many drag shows to choose from, you know you’re at the right one when you spot historian Joe E. Jeffreys there behind his DV camera. For the past four years, the performance studies professor at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts has compiled clips from more than 50 years of rare amateur video, found footage, and his own modern-day captures of New York’s drag heritage to create the annual Drag Show Video Vérité Festival. This year’s edition, which premieres tonight in honor of LGBT Pride Month, features never-before-screened footage of 1960s Brooklyn drag balls, in addition to scores of painted faces both famed and forgotten.

Thu., June 17, 6 p.m., 2010