User Score
3 votes
A rare and stimulating insight into the bohemian world that is drag and into the professional and personal lives of three of its most innovative drag performers: Cindy Pastel, Strykermeyer, and Lady Bump whose lives inspired the feature film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Taking traditional drag cabaret far beyond the tits and feathers of Shirley Bassey-inspired female impersonators, through their eyes we’ll be taken into their world. In an age haunted by the spectre of AIDS we will see how these Drag performers act as both court jester and social commentators. Though drawing from Japanese kabuki and pre-war Berlin Cabaret they exhibit a uniquely Australian larrikin spirit.
Director
Writer
Status
Released
Original Language
EN
Self
Roughly chronological, from 3/96 to 11/96, with a coda in spring of 1997: inside compounds of Aum Shinrikyo, a Buddhist sect led by Shoko Asahara. (Members confessed to a murderous sarin attack in the Tokyo subway in 1995.) We see what they eat, where they sleep, and how they respond to media scrutiny, on-going trials, the shrinking of their fortunes, and the criticism of society. Central focus is placed on Hiroshi Araki, a young man who finds himself elevated to chief spokesman for Aum after its leaders are arrested. Araki faces extreme hostility from the Japanese public, who find it hard to believe that most followers of the cult had no idea of the attacks and even harder to understand why these followers remain devoted to the religion, if not the violence.
