fORT yORK
Tuesday, June 28, 2022

Hedwig and the Angry Inch

With the short films Imitations and Jesse Jams

From the heart of East Berlin at the end of the Cold War to a series of chain seafood restaurants in middle America, John Cameron Mitchell’s punk rock opera Hedwig and the Angry Inch takes us on a musical journey through queer love, loss, and celebrity. Mitchell plays the titular Hedwig, a genderqueer musician forced to make a living by playing restaurants and bars after her ex, Tommy Gnosis, steals her songs and becomes a huge star. Another formally-innovative entry into the canon of New Queer Cinema (see our screening of But I’m a Cheerleader on June 24th), Hedwig is as much a rollicking musical – try not to hum “Wig in a Box” as you walk home – as it is a poignant meditation on trying to find love and acceptance in a world hostile to your very existence.

Paired with Hedwig are two shorts from the Canadian prairies that together offer their own queer meditations on stardom and celebrity. TOPS 2022 Shorts Spotlight filmmaker Trevor Anderson’s Jesse Jams follows the titular Jams, a disabled Indigenous trans musician in Edmonton, as he and his band bring their signature “mumble punk” music to the now-defunct Interstellar Rodeo, an outdoor music festival held in south central Edmonton.

In Imitations, a pitch-black comedy short from the Winnipeg-based directorial duo Fabian Velasco and Milos Mitrovic, we see Arnold, an introverted superfan, go to extreme lengths to imitate Austin Kelly, a Bieber-esque popstar taking the world by storm. Not content to only dress like Kelly, Arnold undergoes plastic surgery to look like Kelly too. With the newfound confidence that comes with his new face, Arnold hits the town, and gets closer than ever to the celebrity he so desperately wants to become (though not in quite the way he expected).

(Please note that this screening includes mature and occasionally disturbing content. See content advisory below for more information.)