GAY24 thunders into Season 6 with a love letter to OTT queens everywhere. In a time before the attempted taxonomy of all deviant genders, where notions of queer sexualities and gender were more messily entwined, the ambiguity of those spaces could sometimes be used to empower - to keep the straights on the back foot. Our two films in this program bask in that ambiguity.

We open with LADY; Ira Sachs' 1993 short written by and starring Dominique Dibbel, a cisgender actress from theatre troupe The Five Lesbian Brothers, whose performance as a wry, ultra-femme trans(?) diva leads us through a pitch-perfect pastiche of the trans docos of the 90s (see the previously screened MIRROR, MIRROR or DRESSED IN BLUE).

Whilst the idea of a cis lesbian sending up a trans-feminised person feels ripe for cancellation in 2024, the performance never veers into mockery. There's a genuine affection here for the kinds of over-the-top characters trans-feminised people can be, and her portrayal dives into sinewy, messy gender zones that remain rare to see on screen. Where else could you see a trans woman played by a cis woman talking about post-GRS penis-envy in a way that genuinely feels like an attempt to untangle the impossibly complex knots that are bodies, gender, desire, and sex?

Our feature for the evening is Kinji Fukasaku's '68 crime mystery BLACK LIZARD. Based on a Mishima adaptation of a Edogawa Ranpo story, the film features the incredible Akihiro Miwa in the title role as a diamond heisting criminal mastermind.

A thunderously fast paced film, the whipcrack camera and innuendo laced dialogue are all further propelled by Miwa's performance. Sitting somewhere between drag queen and femme dom, she utalises her ambiguity of gender to establish smouldering sexual tension with literally everyone she shares a scene with.

All the twists, turns and double-crosses build to an incredible crescendo that remains one of the most important moments of visible queerness in Japanese cinema. A masterpiece in drama!

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