New doc Avant-Drag! is a reminder that doing drag remains transgressive – and often dangerous
Drag performer Parakatyanova in Avant-Drag! (FYTA Films)
Earlier this month, the latest extension of the RuPaul’s Drag Race empire, Global All Stars, hit our screens. Featuring drag performers – all queens, it has to be said – from across almost all of the international versions of the reality contest, the new spin-off is proof that the art form is universally popular.
But for every season of Drag Race that turns drag into palatable, easy-viewing content that can be consumed en masse in the living rooms of heterosexual couples everywhere, there are queers in backstreets and grungy basements making art without being seen. While TV death drops get applause, these drag artists still often get deathly stares on the streets.
“Somehow, in the process of going for the mainstream, we forgot a little bit about the underground which is where we started,” says Athenian filmmaker Fil Ieropoulos (who doesn’t capitalise his surname).
In addition to being the birthplace of democracy, Greece’s capital city is known as a cornerstone of the arts. Famously, the arts include the art of drag, and Athens is brimming with the kind of anarchic, punky and eccentric drag that is yet to bag an Emmy nomination. We’re talking baked goods for breasts, scribbles of “slut” as makeup, and hairpieces made of inhalers.
Ieropoulos is capturing it all. In his new documentary film, Avant-Drag!, he follows 10 local drag performers as they take their art, expression and politics to the streets of the city, forcing a space for themselves in the public eye – regardless of whether it’s a safe one or not.
Set against a backdrop of modern Greece, Avant-Drag! draws a thick line between what many perceive as widespread, cross-border LGBTQ+ acceptance, and the darker, more dangerous reality.
“Because many of the people shown in our film seem fearless, iconoclastic or whatever, I wasn’t familiar with how afraid they are of the street,” Ieropoulos says, calling from London, where his film was just featured at the Raindance Film Festival.
Filming the documentary was at times perilous. The drag artists and production crew, including Ieropoulos and executive producer Spyros Patsouras, encountered seemingly threatening stares from Athenians “all the way through”. That was on the minor end of the spectrum.
“Most people were not happy to have us around,” Ieropoulos admits. Often, they had to pack up filming and move on.
Online, they received death threats, Patsouras says. In the real world, members of the public spat vile remarks at the performers. One man, having seen one of them using the Greek flag as a skirt – a criminal offence in the country – threatened them with violence.
“At the beginning, we were a bit like: ‘It’s a theatre thing’. We tried to lighten it up a bit, but you could see [in] his eye [that he was] not someone you wanted to mess with,” Patsouras continues.
The man disappeared for a while before returning with a threat. “My friends are around, and you don’t want any trouble,” he warned.
They removed the skirt and continued filming, cautiously. It’s notable, Ieropoulos reflects, that he tried to pass off the drag artists as “theatre”. All 10 of the featured artists had their own distinct styles but some were seen more as enacting obscure performance art. Others, with fishnets, glitter-soaked thigh-length boots, and long dark wigs, were playing more explicitly with femininity.
“At the beginning, we were worried that the more-outlandish performers would create more violent feelings in the people. But actually, some of the more, let’s say, classically feminine characters, [who] could also possibly be trans women, were the ones [who] attracted most violence,” Ieropoulos recalls.
“If you’re not too strange to be considered theatrical, but you’re on the border of playing with gender, then maybe it’s a more dangerous place.”
It’s part of the reason why the director is so keen for queer people today to remember the community’s transgressive roots; the line between LGBTQ+ acceptance and condemnation is getting ever thinner. If queer people are deemed entertaining, they are permitted to entertain. If they are simply taking up space, or being vocal about their identities or the rights for which they are fighting, that acceptance wanes.
“It’s not like we have centuries in which being a homosexual was easy,” the director goes on to say. “Even the regressions happening today, all the stuff that is happening with trans people in the UK and the whole TERF rhetoric, shows us that none of that stuff is actually taken for granted. We should always remember the underground scenes.”
The Greek authorities are evidence of tenuous LGBTQ+ acceptance in action, Ieropoulos believes. “There’s a lot of pinkwashing happening by the current government, and the reality of queer lives is not at all there,” he says.
Earlier this year, Greece legalised same-sex marriage and adoption. But there are still no constitutional protections against discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation or gender identity. And violence against the community is rife.
In March, two trans people were attacked in Thessaloniki, the country’s second-largest city. The following month, the UK Foreign Office issued a travel warning for queer Brits heading to Greece, indicating that they may face discrimination. It’s a starkly different picture to the ones printed in Mykonos holiday brochures. “It’s important to have pink tourism in Greece,” Ieropoulos quips.
Towards the end of Avant-Drag!, the cast convenes for dinner where they analyse their experiences, and reflect on drag infiltrating the mainstream. In one of the most powerful scenes, they discuss the death of Athens-based performer and activist Zak Kostopoulos, known as Zackie Oh. He was a friend of the film’s creative team, and an irrepressible influence on the city’s drag scene. He was killed in a jewellery shop in the capital in 2018 – an incident described by some as a lynching.
As both Ieropoulos and Patsouras remember it, the Greek media were unforgiving in their attempts to paint Kostopoulos as the villain, suggesting, incorrectly, that he had a knife, was a drug addict, and was trying to rob the shop. Last month, two men were convicted in connection with the killing. One will serve six years in prison, the other received a five-year sentence but will serve it under house arrest because he is 81.
“In terms of telling history, the fact that Zackie is there and he’s with us in a way, puts a kind of closure to this pain,” says Ieropoulos of including Kostopoulos’ story in the film. “I mean, it will always be an open wound but the fact that it’s there and it’s been narrated and it’s travelling around the world… somehow feels like we’re reclaiming history. We’re not going to let that story disappear.”
Avant-Drag! may sound like a sombre watch, but it’s not. It’s empowering, and a reminder that drag is affirming. But it’s also radical and outrageous, and not always designed to be enjoyed by those who don’t understand its origins. There is one thing it has in common with the sparkly ethos of Drag Race, though: it’s a reminder that drag will never go away, regardless of its platform.
“Some of the performers, they’ve gone through so much in their life with their gender identities and so on, that they are not afraid,” Ieropoulos says. “I mean, they’re afraid but they wouldn’t allow people to stop them.”
Avant-Drag! recently played at the Sarajevo Film Festival in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
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