Helena Solberg Cineclub presents THE DEVIL QUEEN

THE DEVIL QUEEN | A RAINHA DIABA
(Dir. Antonio Carlos da Fontoura | 1974 | Brazil | 100 min.)

From the back room of a brothel, with a taste for power and violence, the outlaw Devil Queen controls the city’s organised crime with an iron fist. Her eyes are thick with green eyeshadow, and her gaze falls mercilessly upon the members of her drug cartel. The same blade she uses to shave her legs can be used to slit a traitor’s throat. But heavy lies the crown: what Queen can trust her subjects, however fabulous? Her dazzling reign of terror is unstable, her authority will be called into question, and war is imminent.

The Devil Queen is loosely based on the persona of Madame Satã (Madam Satan, a name adapted from the homonymous Cecil B. DeMille film), formerly enslaved, drag performer, trans icon, the biological father of seven, convicted murderer and legendary cabaret performer who was a gangster-type hero of Rio’s 1930s underground. Played by Milton Gonçalves, here the dichotomous concept of masculinity – which allows no shades of grey between macho and queen – dissolves into glitter and air, in an early representation of queerness in Brazilian cinema. The film also brings Stepan Nercessian, Odete Lara and Nelson Xavier joining Gonçalves as part of the cast, and was co-written by Plínio Marcos and produced by Roberto Farias: all of them prominent personalities in Brazilian film history.‍

With pose and nerve, Fontoura’s garish pulp construction stands for popular Brazilian cinema during the military dictatorship while surprising with its multifaceted characters that cannot be labelled in the usual fashion. The film was a huge success in Brazil when it premiered in the 1970s, selling around 700,000 tickets. Presented in its 2022 restored version, The Devil Queen is back on the big screens to be re-contextualised and take its place in the future of queer film. Since its re-release, the film has already been shown at Berlinale, ICA London, IndieLisboa and São Paulo International Film Festival, to name but a few.

The copy to be screened was restored in 4K by Janela Internacional de Cinema do Recife in partnership with Cinelimite and Link Digital/Mapa Filmes Laboratory.