DANDY is a documentary short film that explores the collision of the Harlem Renaissance and Black Queer Resistance through the Cape Town Ballroom Scene.
PREVIEW
ABOUT
Centred around LEGACY: The Dandyism Ball – a high-fashion, Main-Scene ballroom event hosted by Edition Events in Cape Town – DANDY, the documentary short, examines the deep historical significance of Black Dandyism, its shaping of the civil rights movement in the United States, and its relevance and parallels to our modern Ballroom scene in South Africa.
Through intimate visuals and honest dialogue, director Zoey Black documents a community archiving its own history, honouring its pioneers, and building a radially free future
SIGNIFICANCE
While Ballroom culture originated among Black and Latinx trans and queer communities in Harlem, DANDY captures a the localisation and re-articulation of Ballroom within contemporary South Africa. The film serves as a journalistic, living archive. It demonstrates how African queer bodies exist in communion with its international counterparts, but also actively transform and reclaim identity and ancestry as acts of cultural sovereignty
Set within Cape Town – a city with a complex, fragmented racial landscape – the film draws parallels between the Black Dandyism of the 1920s Harlem Renaissance and the modern South African Ballroom scene. Dandyism historically served as a subversive political statement. DANDY frames Ballroom categories (such as Realness, Runway, and Best Dressed) as crucial "rehearsals for reality," offering Black and Brown trans/queer people a space to assert their worth, dignity, and reclamation over space in a society still burdened by the legacies of Apartheid.
Told strictly from the inside out, DANDY rejects the voyeuristic gaze often present in mainstream media coverage of queer subcultures. Directed by a practitioner who embodies the culture as both a documentarian, participant, and judge, DANDY moves between the quiet, vulnerable moments of insecurity, to the explosive, euphoric energy of the battles, offering audiences a rare, authentically grounded portrait of resilience, joy, and community holding.
CAST
ZOEY BLACK
KIMI BLACK
RORI WILD
CHESHIRE VINEYARD
DIRECTOR
Zoey Black is a queer renaissance and culture architect. She is the foremost documentarian of Ballroom and queer culture in Cape Town, South Africa, working in collaborative practice to archive the queer community with dignity, care, and accountability.
As a disabled, indigenous, queer, transgender woman of colour, her unique work is focused on using creative mediums and cultural platforms as vehicles for social change and is dedicated to advancing queer human rights around the world.
a ZOEY BLACK documentary
Zoey Black presents
in association with Gamut 1
DANDY
Produced and Directed by ZOEY BLACK Edited by ZOEY BLACK Additional Footage by KIMI BLACK
Stills Photography by ARCHIVES OF AMERICAN ART, DAILY WORKER, JAMES VAN DER ZEE, LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
Music by ARIEL SHALOM, ASSAF AYALON, THE RALLIES, RONIIT, YARIN PRIMAK, ZISO, SZNS
© 2026 Zoey Black. All rights reserved.