If you’re a queer Austinite (and subscribing to Qmmunity’s new newsletter, which you should, like, totally do), then you’ve probably already heard about this Sunday’s One Night Only: Drag with an Expiration Date, an extravaganza where local drag artists will morph into never-before-seen queens for one night and one night only.
But maybe you didn’t know that the event will be featured in the new short film “Butch Queen,” the latest project from Allie Lane and her girlfriend Angele Cooper’s film production company Alpha Female Films. The last time the Chronicle caught up with the duo, they were raising funds for the “queer interracial intersectional-feminist” company and two new shorts plus one feature film. With the first short, “Love in the Shadows,” wrapping up shooting in New York just a few weeks ago, Lane and Cooper are returning to Austin, Lane’s “second hometown,” this weekend to shoot the second short “Butch Queen.”
“I wrote [“Butch Queen”] after coming out to my family at the beginning of this year,” recalls Lane, a decision, she says, that caused her family to shun her. It was this very feeling of rejection that inspired Lane to make a film about “gay sanctuaries and the community that keeps us queers sane in troubled times.” In “Butch Queen,” an interracial lesbian couple (who will be portrayed by Lane and Cooper) living in a small, rural Southern town finds their sanctuary at a drag show, before the bar is “raided by cops and an almost fatal encounter ensues.”
Set in the present day, Lane hopes the film will “call attention to several key issues that our country has not been readily able to solve,” pointing to police brutality within the black community, gun control, and discrimination towards the LGBTQ community and people of color. “I hadn’t seen a film yet addressing these issues and [so I] wanted to use my short … to magnify” these dilemmas.Teaming up with Jeremy von Stilb (half of the duo behind Contrast Film Festival, this year’s “Best Boundary-Pushing Fest”), the two sought “real Southern talent” with local drag queens to put on Sunday’s show for the film. Lane promises the lineup includes a gaggle of “veteran and baby drag queens” alike, including this year’s “Best of Austin” drag performer Louisianna Purchase as Chicken Tenders, Bulimianne Rhapsody as Chairman Ultra, and even FLOTUS herself (performed by a surprise special guest) plans on closing out the show.
With Tuesday’s election results on her mind, Lane says “Butch Queen” is “meant to highlight not just the current political divide, but a cultural divide in our times.” She explains, “Many rural communities live in a bubble from liberal ones, and vice versa, making it impossible” for them to understand each others point of view. She’s hoping that more Democrats in the House of Representatives suggests – hopefully – more Americans are gravitating toward a place of compassion and diversity these days. And honestly, what better way to celebrate diversity than by going to a drag show and supporting queer filmmakers? You tell us, bb.
“One Night Only: Drag with an Expiration Date” takes over the Sahara Lounge this Sunday, Nov. 11, 10pm. Sahara Lounge, 1413 Webberville Rd. $5 donation. Stay up to date with the project at www.alphafemalefilms.com.
This article appears in November 9 • 2018.