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AUCKLAND
TUE 1 JUN, 8.30PM, VILLAGE QUEEN ST
FRI 4 JUN, 8.30PM, VILLAGE QUEEN ST
MADAME SATÃ
Dir: Karim Aïnouz, Brazil/France, 2002, 35mm, 109 mins, Portuguese with English subtitles
This passionately told film is the true story of Rio’s most celebrated drag queen, João Francisco. Born to slaves in the arid North of Brazil and sold by his mother at age 7, he ended up on the mean streets of Lapa, Rio De Janiero. Karim Aïnouz's portrait of this legendary figure unfolds against the vibrant, sordid background of 1920s Lapa – a thronging underworld of pimps and whores, of cut-throats, queers and artists, of dark bars and brothels. It’s a world run through with violence and raw desire. The film creates the atmosphere of a bygone era so clearly you can smell the sweat and cheap perfume.
Francisco is no sweet lip-synching queen. Thief, prostitute, and killer, he lives in an extended family of outcasts who alternately enjoy his affection and fear his explosive temper. Indecently handsome thief Renatinho becomes his lover and their sizzling encounters ooze lust all over the screen. Adopting his Madame Satã drag persona, Francisco’s act is a strutting, writhing celebration of the flesh, a feverish samba. Filmed in rich high contrast that gives the streets of Lapa a squalid glamour, Madame Satã is not an exotic tour of the slums of Rio. It takes you deeper into the soul of its title character and his desperate world than you imagined a movie could go. Bursting with colour, it’s violent, gaudy and gritty, a fiery bad dream – but what a movie!
‘Vividly incandescent! Like Josephine Baker re-imagined as a transvestite brawler… elevating sin to something sublime’. – Time Out NY
‘Erotic, immediate and dangerous’. – San Francisco Chronicle
AUCKLAND
TUE 1 JUN, 8.30PM, VILLAGE QUEEN ST
FRI 4 JUN, 8.30PM, VILLAGE QUEEN ST
Reel Queer Inc, PO Box 12-201, Wellington, New Zealand
Tel: +64 4 972 6775 Fax: +64 4 801 9906
Email: info@outtakes.org.nz
Website hosted by Out Takes 2004 sponsor ORCON