Queertactics – Vienna Film Festival: Austerity is burning

The club is a place of liberation: As bodies move, so do identities. A lot seemed possible last Friday on the dance floor of Club U, which is located in the basement of an old Otto Wagner station on Karlsplatz in Vienna. DJ Malounadou, who followed DJ Yassi from the legendary House of Homoriental, reassembled the audio snippets of an iconic anthem on the turntables. “Music Is the Answer – to your problems” – the coping strategy propagated by Celeda and Danny Tenaglia in the late 1990s still seems to mobilize the local LGBTIQ+ community today. It is not only extremely diverse, but also inclusive – after all, being disabled is just as much a part of queer culture as making voices from the diaspora visible and audible.

This year, Queertactics also featured a portion of clown drag in live form for the first time. Three performers from post-austerity Athens took the stage at Club U shortly before midnight. A few hours earlier they had appeared in the documentary »Avant-Drag! Radical Performers Re-Imagine Athens« by Fil Ieropoulos can be seen on the screen of the Admiral Cinema in Vienna as part of this year’s Queertactics film festival. In the pill-filled corset with a turquoise mohawk wig and plush dildo, any recourse to a binary gender norm of any kind seems obsolete. For Kangela Tromocratic, Veronique Tromocratic and drag king Er Libido, the grief over the trans* murders in their city sometimes also became an impetus for their queer body grotesques. During the Rebetiko playback, Zak Kostopoulos alias Zackie Oh secretly greeted from off-camera – as a result of homophobic violence, the LGBTIQ+ activist died in the streets of Athens in September 2018.

The consistently critical audience at the four-day festival would by no means have been satisfied with causal chains of standardized bodies. Queertactics is not just about aesthetics, but also about the narratives behind them – and the possibility of their translation into another register. An incomplete audio description that excluded deaf people from the entire film event tipped the scales in the final verdict. During the opening evening, an attentive subtitler from the audience also asked for what was missing from the deaf perspective: There were not enough linguistic descriptions for everyone who saw the feature film “Todo El Silencio (All The Silence)” in the sold-out hall of the audible event in the lower edge of the picture. What was required was not a higher level of hermeneutics, but just a few more signs – as equivalents that function equally in different spheres of circulation.

The festival directors of Queertactics are already looking for a better audio description for the deafening sounds in “Todo El Silencio” – at least that’s what they said loudly after the discussion. Katja Wiederspahn and Dagmar Fink presented the queer favorite from Mexico on Wednesday evening at the Metro Kinokulturhaus in the presence of actress Ludwika Paleta and a sign language interpreter. The film’s characters combine sign language with spoken Spanish – and thus repeatedly question the one-dimensional expectations of an ableist society.

»All The Silence« is about the sign language teacher and actress Miriam, who is firmly anchored in the local deaf community as CODA – Child of Deaf Adults. When she learns that she will lose her hearing, the acoustic events in the film increase – from the booming soundscape caused by hyperacusis to the ringing in the ear caused by sudden hearing loss. The growing tensions between Miriam and her deaf yet speaking partner culminate in a final scene: “I don’t understand you,” it says shortly before the fadeout. Miriam is responding to her film counterpart – and at the same time to the questioning gaze of the audience.

This year Queertactics turned five years old. The increase in sponsors gave the festival organizers a financial foothold and was also able to invite guests from abroad; However, as Dagmar Fink emphasizes in the interview, it is not enough for much more than two. Years ago, together with Gabi Frimberger from the Vienna Women’s Film Festival, she initiated a preliminary form of Queertactics – thanks to a small grant, non-heteronormative films could be shown outside of the supporting program for the first time.

The festival has not lost its feminist foundation to this day, and it does not deny its origins. The Brazilian feature film “Baby” by Marcelo Caetano, which was shown in the Admiral cinema on Sunday afternoon, was due to the “gay quota”, said co-director Katja Wiederspahn with a laugh. This year, too, people from the entire LGBTIQ+ spectrum were present in the moderated discussions following the screenings – from Eva Fels (TransX association), Dani Baumgartner from the feminist information and education center Women’s Solidarity to two artists who identify as transmasculine Viennese voguing club Queermotions. The latter commented on the screening of the documentary “The Aggressives” from 2005, which was shown in memory of queer film festival pioneer Barbara Reumüller, who died last year.

It seems to be quite simple: you walk across the room on an imaginary line as straight as possible and start each step with the ball of your foot. Performing in this way affects your entire posture: the pelvis and shoulders tilt back, a hip swing develops – and that’s exactly what voguing is all about. Provided it is one of the categories aimed at portraying femininity. Since the release of Jennie Livingston’s documentary “Paris is Burning” (1990), which shows black queens and their houses, queer ballroom culture has multiplied its categories.

In Daniel Peddle’s “The Aggressives,” black women who live as men walk across the stage in the “butch” category. They carry bricks, portray construction workers or Wall Street brokers and describe themselves as “AGs,” or “aggressives” for short. Apart from that, they desire a lot – but especially other women. During her walks, her credibility is at stake every time: only those who can walk credibly become a celebrated star. “Being a butch means doing a men’s job” is one of the subtitles in “The Aggressives,” which is now considered a classic of queer cinema. The sequel begins 25 years later and does not continue the self-confident butch story. Aside from the supporting program, Katja Wiederspahn and Dagmar Fink want to shed light on their unpredictable transformations soon – as a documentary sequel follow-up with a time gap in between.