Featuring
Fil Ieropoulos · 2024 · 1h32m
Ten different Athenian drag queens fabulously challenge social conventions while deconstructing gender, queerness and nationalism.
Thursday, Sep. 25, 7:30pm
Avant-Drag!
The loud, proud, and ferocious heroines of modern Greek drag.
Admission
By donation (suggested: €2-€5)
This film captures the vibrancy of Athens’ underground drag scene and its role in pushing boundaries and expressing dissident identities. It goes beyond the mainstream representations of drag (and the Hollywoodian world of RuPaul) focusing on the more radical, explicitly political and raw performances.
Avant-Drag! is a love song to Athens; a city that can be as oppressive as it can be a refuge for art freaks and a hot-bed for creativity. The film examines the use of public space and street performance as acts of visibility and protest by the drag community — while also addressing the problem of gentrification that is increasingly a major challenge for underprivileged Athenians.
The film is an homage to Zackie Oh and other Greek drag activists and performers who have been victims of homophobic violence and police brutality.
Sergio Rigoletto is an Assistant Professor of Film Studies at the University of Groningen. His research focuses on the politics of film aesthetics and its relation to social change, queer media cultures, international television, stars and performance studies and several aspects of Italian cinema.
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