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Fascism creeps in from the margins. History shows that it swallows the most vulnerable first. But while it’s common for many to assume that society’s most marginalized and disenfranchised members simply succumbed to the maw of the machine, reality is far more complex, far more instructive. The queer community has been both on the receiving end of fascism’s violence and at the forefront of resistance to it. For two nights we will travel from Berlin to Brazil to see how queer artists — using the power of music, dance, glitter and camp — pushed back against the death machine of greed, bigotry and targeted violence. In both the classic, Academy Award-winning 1972 musical Cabaret and the 2009 cult film Dzi Croquettes, glamour is a deceptive weapon put to sharp ends. In one film, song and dance are used as an entrée into shrewd critiques of nihilism and cruelty and the seductive power they can hold, the way they can consume everything in their path even as a Bacchanalian air floats around. In Dzi Croquettes, the queer imagination is unleashed in all its dazzling drag glory to push back against the despair and doom that can permeate everything and lead to learned helplessness and pre-emptive bending of the knee. Neither film shies away from what it can cost (mentally, emotionally, spiritually) to navigate such pernicious moments; they show that surviving costs. But without didacticism, they show that it doesn’t have to bankrupt you. And Liza Minnelli is the glorious thread linking both films.
Series programmed and notes written by Ernest Hardy.
Special thanks to our community partner: Queer Film Los Angeles.
