Picturehouse will release Carol Doda Topless at The Condor, a revealing and fascinating documentary on the legendary San Francisco burlesque performer.
Co-directed by San Francisco-based filmmakers Marlo McKenzie and Jonathan Parker and produced by Metallica co-founder and drummer Lars Ulrich, the film premiered in 2023 at the Telluride Film Festival and the Mill Valley Film Festival.
It opens exclusively in theaters beginning March 22 in New York and San Francisco, and March 29 in Los Angeles, after which it will roll out to more than 40 markets.
The documentary tells the story of a daring young woman who fired one of the first shots in the sexual revolution of the 1960s and became an international sex symbol and a San Francisco tourist attraction second only to the Golden Gate Bridge.
Carol Doda Topless at The Condor gives audiences an entertaining and revealing look behind the scenes of Doda’s improbable journey from cocktail waitress to international icon and defender of sexual freedom. The film was
“Carol Doda is a provocative story and a nostalgic love letter to San Francisco in the ’60s,” says Bob Berney, CEO of Picturehouse. “Marlo and Jonathan take the audience back to the days before the Summer of Love and the sexual revolution, using amazing archival footage of the city that essentially makes it another character in the film. We are pleased to once again collaborate with Lars Ulrich, after previously releasing Metallica’s groundbreaking film Through the Never.”
Based in part on Three Nights at the Condor, a memoir by Benita Mattioli, the wife of Condor co-owner Pete Mattioli, Carol Doda Topless at The Condor brings together a compelling array of Doda’s contemporaries, including dancers, club owners, bartenders and others, who share their first-hand experiences. The film also features interviews with academics who have studied Doda’s role in redefining attitudes toward female nudity, as well as candid, fascinating interviews with Doda herself.