A Rainha Diaba

EN

“The story I developed with Marcos brings the narrative to its bloody end, but the film, like all cinema I love, goes far beyond the story it is telling. What fascinated me as a director was the possibility of inventing a different reality, far from all polite limits, in camera movements, strident sound, art collages, set decoration, costumes, subversive makeup, penetrating music, burlesque acting, in the red of blood, in the gold of sequins.

I invented my direction on the film set, rehearsing the camera movements, and chasing the actors with my Super8, for José Medeiros to translate the movements on his unlocked 35mm camera. That was the spirit; it was my spirit, the spirit of the crew, and the spirit of the cast. One of unlocked creative freedom, rebellious, marginal, and happy. And the spirit remains, to be transmitted to those who watch the film now.”

Antonio Carlos da Fontoura1

“In A Rainha Diaba, Brazilian history is not told from the official point of view, but from that of the common people. One could argue that it is also an attempt to find a queer history buried in the depths of heteronormativity. The film’s climax is a party in which Diaba receives her friends. The party is not only visually splendorous, but an allegory of queer affection – when the house is closed for clients and only Diaba’s guests are allowed in, it seems a rare moment wherein a queer world is the norm and queer affection is what is most desired.”

Mateus Nagime2

“If capoeira, which the real Madame Satã had so brilliantly mastered, is a blending of combat and dance, the violence of the gangsters in A Rainha Diaba blends with an aesthetic visual regime that never denies its social and political function. Colour here becomes the medium of a queering of the gangster genre. Especially in the first part of the film, the genre-driven narrative is overlayed by colours, laughter, suggestive glances – and thereby rendered absurd. [...]

Alongside the queering of the genre and the resistance this gives rise to, a third way in which queerness and violence come together or collide here is ecstasy. Especially at the end, in a crazy torture scene, the separation between violence and pleasure is transgressed in a mad scream before the film ends where it began: in the antechamber to hell, where the bodies – all bodies – are disposed of in a big pile. As if all along they had only been agents of an intoxicating carnival of colours, now over. As if, when all the power struggles are over, it is only the intoxication of death that triumphs, and even the devil cannot escape.”

Philipp Stadelmaier3

• 1Antonio Carlos da Fontoura, “Rebellious, Marginal, and Happy. On inventing a blood-and-sequin gay-pop film”.
• 2Mateus Nagime, “A Rainha Diaba,” Senses of Cinema, November 2023.
• 3Philipp Stadelmaier, “Queer as Hell”.