Chocolate Babies

Chocolate Babies (1996)

Terror was never tastier.

Through a campaign of fabulous surprise attacks, an underground band of radical queer HIV+ activists, addicts, and drag queens take to the streets of New York City to combat conservative politicians and government apathy towards the AIDS crisis.

Date of release
1996-07-21
TMDB
5.6 / 10 (9)
Runtime
1h 20m
Genres
Drama, Comedy
Director
Stephen Winter

Casting

Interesting facts

Chocolate Babies is a 1996 American film directed by Stephen Winter. The film stars Sean Barr, Suzanne Gregg Ferguson, Dudley Findlay Jr., Jon Kit Lee, Michael Lynch, Claude E. Sloan and Bryan Webster. The film premiered on July 21, 1996, at Outfest in Los Angeles.

Background and production

Winter was in his twenties when he wrote and directed the film, and he recalls the independent filmmaking atmosphere at the time was not really ideal, and the project "didn't fit into that." He also noted that during this period, there was "systematic institutional racism and homophobia and transphobia", so it just basically went unnoticed and its message was misinterpreted.

For the characters in the film he auditioned actors from the Black queer theatre scene in New York City, and bluntly told them he was making a "comedy drama about HIV-positive Black and Asian drag queens who become political terrorists and kidnap a closeted conservative politician." Two of the characters in the film were based on friends he had when he was living in Chicago.

The film was shot over the course of three weeks in September 1994, on a budget of $36,000, using 16 mm Fujifilm. Winter explains that he chose Fujifilm because "unlike Kodak, Fuji was really good for non-white skin." One of the filming locations was on Winter's apartment rooftop; he liked it because he knew there wasn't going to be any traffic issues and "it's got all that light."

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