The Queen

In a pre-Stonewall New York City, drag queens from across the east coast come together for a beauty pageant judged by Andy Warhol.

The 1967 All-America Camp Beauty Pageant is upon us, and for many of the drag queens competing, winning would be a dream come true. The venue has been booked, the performers have checked into their hotel, and national organiser and host Sabrina rules the roost. But no drag pageant is without its drama, and drama is about to be unleashed.

Curator's note
If the drag scene is a constant, then it is actually the world around it that has changed, and in 1967 it was tough out there for a queen. Drag was still illegal in New York, and organising a pageant was a bold and necessary act of defiance. Profoundly, this largely goes unspoken in Frank Simon's The Queen, perhaps left for the audience to assume, and perhaps assumed by the filmmakers that it would never change. It did.

Featuring Andy Warhol and Edie Sedgwick, Frank Simon's stunning documentary captures a time, a scene and a burgeoning queer rights movement in the moments before it erupted. You can see the fire and passion in The Queen, and two years later, that energy would fuel the Stonewall riots.