House Music Film ‘Move Ya Body’ Comes To Thessaloniki Doc Festival

House music typically thumps at 120-130 beats per minute, in 4/4 time.

That’s an awfully clinical description of the sound that shakes the floor and the walls at dance clubs around the world. What’s truly important — it makes you move ya body.

That, in fact, is the title of Elegance Bratton’s new documentary – Move Ya Body: The Birth of House, which screens at the Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival on Monday after holding its international premiere at TiDF on Saturday.

Bratton, director of Pier Kids and The Inspection, hails from New Jersey, but his documentary takes him to Chicago, where House Music emerged in the late 1970s. “Out of the underground dance clubs on the South Side,” notes TiDF, “a group of friends turn a new sound into a global movement.”

One of those friends, Vince Lawrence, played a key role developing the music, which grew out of disco. Ironically, or fatefully, Lawrence was working at Comiskey Park in Chicago on July 12, 1979, the night of the notorious “Disco Demolition” – an event in the middle of a White Sox doubleheader in which tens of thousands of white kids, encouraged by a Chicago DJ, brought their disco records to the musical equivalent of a book burning. They gleefully destroyed giant heaps of records created mostly by Black and gay artists.

“For all intents and purposes,” Bratton observes, “that whole demolition was meant to remind Black people in Chicago and really black people all over the world — because let’s not forget it was broadcast globally at the time — of our place and not to reach for too much.”

Lawrence was assaulted that night at the baseball stadium, and he eventually accepted a legal settlement of $5,000 in compensation for his ordeal – enough money for the aspiring musician and producer to afford a Moog Prodigy synthesizer.

“For Vince to take that money… and to buy the synthesizer that would create the first recorded House song — that, to me, is a movie; that, to me, is important,” Bratton says. “It is a message for anybody — regardless of your race or your sexuality, what kind of music you like, we all feel powerless in this world, especially now, we’re all feeling like things are moving outside of our desire and beyond our control — and Move Ya Body: The Birth of House is evidence that that’s not true. Actually, the power is within you. If you hold onto your dreams, even in the face of rabid bigotry and hatred, there is a possibility that you can change the world.”

No single person invented House music – its origins can be traced to, and are claimed by, more than a few.

“I had some people who didn’t make it into the film,” Bratton notes. “They refused to be interviewed because when Chester [producer Chester Algernal Gordon] and I called them, they said that our voices sounded ‘gay,’ and they were heterosexual. And to them, House music was invented by heterosexual Black men. To them, there’s a gay agenda to usurp their origin story and instead make it a Queer one. That was shocking to me because all of these musicians learned what House was listening to [DJs] — Frankie Knuckles, Ron Hardy, Larry Levan, going to gay clubs.”

What’s critical to understand is that House music came from Black creatives, gay and straight. But as has happened so often in the record business, it was white executives and even some white artists who got the credit and the cash.

“The pioneers of House,” says Bratton, “have been dispossessed of the thing that they’ve invented.”

The film is reaching festivals at a time when the MAGA movement would erase Black experience and achievement from collective memory.

“I’m very much concerned with America’s story right now, and how we come to be, and particularly Black American stories. There’s a lot of intense pressure around the validity of the idea of even what an African American is and what is the value of that history, and that people say that it’s quite myopic and that it doesn’t really matter outside of the particular communities that generate this history and generate these stories. So, to be able to take the story of House to Western Europe [at TiDF], it’s significant. For me, it’s proof that I’m doing the right thing.”

The project came to Bratton through One Story Up, the production company founded by Oscar and Emmy winner Roger Ross Williams and Emmy winner Geoff Martz, who serve as executive producers on Move Ya Body.

“I was at a screening of The Inspection at NewFest, and Roger’s like, ‘Hey, I’ve got this movie for you… about the birth of House music,’” Bratton recalls. “And then he was like, ‘Yeah, Hillary Clinton‘s behind it.’ And I was like, ‘What?’ He’s like, ‘Yeah, Hillary Clinton’s a house head.’”

Indeed, the former first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of state backed the project through her HiddenLight production company, which she founded with daughter Chelsea Clinton and Sam Branson.

“She’s a Chicago acolyte herself,” Bratton says of Windy City native Hillary. “I am waiting for my Hillary call… But I will say this, I’ve heard through the grapevine that she loves the movie and she’s listening to the songs from the movie. It’s just crazy to me that I’m working with them. And it’s crazy to me she loves House. I’m so grateful to just be able to be in community with someone, with people as meaningful and impactful.”

Move Ya Body held its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. Next up, after Thessaloniki, are more festival screenings.

“As of now, my plan is to take the movie around the world and to meet the people who support it and build a bigger community around my work and around my voice and around the people that I advocate for,” Bratton says. “We are in various conversations with various different distributors, and I’m looking forward to that coming to fruition.”

Bratton adds, “I’d love a theatrical release for this film. I think this film offers a unique experience in a theater. I want to do live screenings with DJs and invite the audience to dance in their seats while they watch the movie. And I’m confident it’s going to find its home; it’s going to find its platform. And when it does, I can’t wait to show it to even more of the world.”