Make Scene Film Club invites you to ease on down the road with: The Wiz - a dazzling, disco-infused reimagining of The Wizard of Oz that turns a familiar tale into something bold, soulful and super extra.
Directed by Sidney Lumet and featuring music supervised by the legendary Quincy Jones, this 1978 spectacle transforms Oz into a dreamlike, urban fantasia. The yellow brick roads become city streets and underground stations, the Emerald City is a motel and Dorothy Gale's home is a New York apartment filled with family. It’s big, it’s weird, it’s camp—and unapologetically black.
At the centre is "The Boss" herself... Miss Diana Ross, giving us a Dorothy who is less wide-eyed ingénue and more searching, vulnerable adult. A beloved gay icon in a story adopted by the LGBTQ community, The Wiz taps into the long-standing queer love for The Wizard of Oz - a story already rich with themes of chosen family, transformation and finding where you belong - and reframes it through Black culture and community. The result is something powerful: a story where marginalised identity, resilience and self-acceptance intersect that's more than just "the Motown version" of L. Frank Baum's classic American fairytale.
And then there’s the vibe...glittering visuals, quirky performances (jumpscare from Michael Jackson as the Scarecrow and a delicious turn from Richard Prior as The Wiz himself), and a soundtrack that swings from gospel to funk to full disco fantasy with beautiful songs that match the classic 1939 version ("Home" and "Ease on Down The Road" being the standouts).
The Wiz is messy, magical, and completely one of a kind - a camp classic that doesn’t just follow the same old yellow brick road, it creates it's own path and struts right down it to the Emerald City and back to the real world.
"When I think of home, I think of a place
Where's there's love overflowing
I wish I was home, I wish I was back there
With the things I've been knowing"
This screening includes an intro from Make A Scene Film Club curator and SCENE: Manchester LGBTQ+ Film & TV Festival lead programmer Gary James Williams.
TICKETS FROM: https://cultplex.co.uk/Cultplex.dll/WhatsOn?f=1134834