0 People Follow
Black Harvest Presents: THE DEVIL QUEEN
Fri, Jun 5 | 7 pmGene Siskel Film Center
About
In the underworld of 1970s Rio de Janeiro, the feared Devils Queen rules a drug cartel from the back room of a brothel. Draped in green eyeshadow and menace, she commands loyalty with a jackknife that serves equally for shaving legs and slitting throats. Her grip on power begins to falter as rival factions favela gangsters, drag queens, and sex workers turn on one another in a violent struggle to claim her throne, exposing a world where those excluded from bourgeois society fight for dominance on the margins. Directed by Antnio Carlos de Fontoura during Brazils military dictatorship, this lurid tale is loosely inspired by the legendary 1930s gangster Joo Francisco dos Santos. The film reimagines the figure in a 1970s setting as an early, provocative representation of queerness. As The Devil Queen, Milton Gonalves delivers a striking performance that destabilizes rigid notions of masculinity, dissolving the binary of macho and queen into something volatile and unforgettable.
Gene Siskel Film Center
164 North State Street