Be Gay, Do Crime is a season at the BFI Southbank, London, which runs throughout August. Inspired by an anarchist catchphrase, it’s a season of provocative and playful films exploring the relationship between queerness and crime.
The season begins with Love, Money and Anarchy, an illustrated talk on the criminally good films in the programme, which is split into three themes. First off, is a series titled Love. Dog Day Afternoon (1975), which is based on the real-life bank robbery by John Wojtowicz to pay for his partner’s gender-affirming surgery.
The rarely screened On Guard is a heist thriller like no other, in which a group of women try to sabotage Utero, a reproductive engineering company. Superdyke is a short introduction to a troop of shield-bearing Amazons, and In Bound features gangster’s moll Violet and ex-con Corky as they team up in business and pleasure to steal $2 million of Mafia money. Fresh, leather-clad and very sexy, it’s a defining film of the neo-noir genre and lesbian cinema.
Under the title Money, the season offers The Devil Queen, which depicts Rio’s crime scene, inspired by the life of the so-called Madama Sata – a black, queer queen-pin. By Hook Or By Crook follows hustler Shy, who no sooner has arrived in San Francisco than he encounters the troubled but charming Valentine, who is searching for his birth mother.
Billed as “the best African sci-fi political satire with homoerotic overtones you’ve ever seen”, The Bloodettes is a romp through dystopian Cameroon. Under the banner Anarchy, Fresh Kill is a daring experimental vision of how crime can be used as activism. A lesbian couple enter the world of ‘hactivism’ to expose a sinister corporation.
Chocolate Babies depicts AIDS activists in New York, an HIV+ brother and sister, and two drag queens, who fight against politicians with queer terrorism. The Living End is a boisterous, uncompromising film that follows a queer odd couple, who after they’re both diagnosed with HIV, experience an act of violence, and take to the road with the motto: ‘fuck everything’.
And finally, Female Trouble, a John Waters classic, which features a good girl gone bad. It’s the cha-cha heel-loving Dawn Davenport – one of the many iconic collaborations between Waters and Divine.
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