GLENNDA & FRIENDS: Queer Videos from the ‘90s!

GLENNDA ORGASM & FRIENDS: Queer Videos from the ‘90s! Join us for a screening of three videos from Glenn Belverio’s Manhattan public access series from the 1990s, "The Brenda and Glennda Show" and "Glennda and Friends", which took the art of drag out of nightclubs and into the streets to address queer and feminist issues with campy humor. Glenn Belverio will be in person for a post-screening Q&A moderated by Ben Shields. 

ABOUT THE FILMS:

Bad Grrrls (1993, 29 mins) In this episode of Glennda and Friends, Glennda Orgasm and Fonnda LaBruce (gay punk filmmaker Bruce LaBruce) attend a Riot Grrrl conference on New York’s Lower East Side. At the conference, they conduct interviews with punk women, performers and artists, including Penny Arcade and Sadie Benning. In doing so, Glennda and Fonnda navigate a range of perspectives on feminism, punk, and underground activism. Furthermore, they engage with questions of drag’s relationship with feminism, and how one would reconcile the problems of punk with Riot Grrrl’s desire for women’s liberation. 

Fagtasia Solstice (1992, 20 mins) Brenda Sexual and Glennda Orgasm attend a Radical Faerie event in NYC to commemorate the Summer Solstice and to witness the modern, urban equivalent of the Stonehenge solstice phenomenon: the sun positioning itself between the towers of the World Trade Center. Through interviews with Faeries and footage of their walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, the group proposes to reclaim the city as a safe space for queer people, and discuss reorienting queer consciousness toward spirituality.

On the Campaign Trail with Joan Jett Blakk (1992, 29 mins) In this episode of The Brenda and Glennda Show, Glennda meets up with guest co-host Joan Jett Blakk to discuss Blakk’s 1992 presidential run. The pair interview people on the street outside of the 1992 Democratic Convention, held at Madison Square Garden in NYC. They discuss topics including the police state, weaknesses of the two-party political system, feminism and political elitism.

ARTIST BIOS:

Glenn Belverio is an independent film and video maker who lives and works in New York City. He began producing the popular Manhattan Cable series The Brenda and Glennda Show in 1990, a talk show that took the art of drag out of nightclubs and into the streets, mixing politics with humor. The show was hosted by Glennda Orgasm (Belverio) and Brenda Sexual (Duncan Elliott). In 1993, the series became Glennda and Friends, a post-queer talk show featuring provocative co-stars such as gay punk filmmaker Bruce LaBruce and guerrilla scholar Camille Paglia. Belverio and Paglia's collaborative project Glennda and Camille Do Downtown later became a short film and was well received at the 1994 Sundance Film Festival. Glenn's work has screened at venues such as the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, the New Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Wexner Center for the Arts, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, UnionDocs, the Brooklyn Museum, Anthology Film Archives and the Rotterdam International Film Festival. In May, Glenn’s work will be shown at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

Ben Shields co-edits GRAND JOURNAL and works in the editorial team of Alfred A. Knopf. He writes fiction and nonfiction, with work appearing in Hyperallergic, Bookforum, Mars Review of Books, and elsewhere.