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A Rainha Diaba

The Devil Queen
A party scene with three people wearing flamboyant costumes and saluting each other with drinks in their hands. The person in the middle is Brazil
© José Medeiros

Fri 17.02.
22:00

  • Director

    Antonio Carlos da Fontoura

  • Brazil / 1973
    99 min. / Original version with English subtitles

  • Original language

    Portuguese

  • Cinema

    Zoo Palast 2

    zu den Ticketszu dem Kalender

The Black gay “Devil Queen” (her real name is never mentioned) rules the underworld of Rio de Janeiro from the back room of a brothel. Her eyes thick with green eyeshadow, her gaze falls mercilessly upon the members of her drug cartel. The same jackknife can be used either to shave her legs or to slit open traitors. But her reign of terror is unstable; resistance is brewing. Soon, everyone is waging war against each other to replace the queen: the favela gangsters against the gays, the drag queens against the sex workers. People with few chances in bourgeois life.

Fontoura’s garish pulp construction stands for popular Brazilian cinema during the military dictatorship, whereby power relations were exaggerated in nihilistic fashion. Much like in Karim Aïnouz’s MADAME SATÃ (2002), legendary 1930s gangster figure João Francisco dos Santos serves here as an inspiration, who this time is transposed into the 1970s as an early representation of queerness. Milton Gonçalves plays her with various voices, and the dichotomous concept of masculinity – which allows no shades of grey between macho and queen – dissolves here into glitter and air. (Jan Künemund)

Funded by:

  • Logo Minister of State for Culture and the Media