Queer Up North

Queer Up North is marking the launch of its new digital archive with a night at HOME built around one of the festival’s own landmark moments. The evening opens with a screening of The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, followed by the premiere of Brett Chapman’s documentary short It’s Queer Up North: Saving the Show, and a party with DJ Kath McDermott.

Chapman’s new documentary traces the history of Manchester’s LGBTQ+ arts festival Queer Up North, which ran on and off between 1992 and the early 2010s, and the creation of the new archive – a collection of posters, flyers, photographs, programmes and newly recorded oral histories charting one of the most influential LGBTQ+ arts festivals in the UK and Europe.

The archive is the jumping-off point for To See and Be Seen, a major new exhibition from Manchester-based artist Conor Collins. There’s a whole programme of events showcasing the legacy of Queer Up North and the ways it challenged perceptions, changed attitudes and helped define a new era of queer culture in Manchester. At Manchester Central Library, there are panel discussions – Generations of Love and Causing Trouble – which aim to look at the ways past challenges can inspire future possibilities. Over at Contact, meanwhile, three young writers (Louis Glazzard, Ella Otomewo and Okechukwu Nzelu) present newly commissioned work as part of Queer Up North Young Writers: Queered Up Now.

The screening on Friday 2 October feels like a neat, full-circle bit of programming considering The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert was first previewed in Manchester at Queer Up North back in 1994. The film of course went on to become an international sensation, winning the Academy Award for Best Costume Design before cementing its position as an essential entry in the queer cinema canon.

Written and directed by Stephan Elliott, Priscilla follows two drag queens, Tick and Adam (Hugo Weaving and Guy Pearce), and a transgender woman, Bernadette (Terence Stamp), as they board the titular tour-bus and travel across the Outback to the centre of Australia in order to perform a residency at a casino hotel in Alice Springs. Along the way, the trio lip-sync their way through the likes of Charlene’s ‘I’ve Never Been to Me’, Gloria Gaynor’s ‘I Will Survive’ and multiple ABBA numbers as part of what has become a classic soundtrack.

As the tour-bus winds its way through desert canyons and mining settlements, the film takes turns to confirm and confound our preconceptions of the Australian Outback. So often in cinema this is a place of darkness and foreboding (see Mad Max, Wake in Fright), and while the three performers do encounter prejudice and bigotry on multiple fronts, the script also frequently upends our expectations in sly and hilarious fashion as Tick, Adam and Bernadette’s trepidations are met with moments of tolerance and joy.

Indeed, much like the work of Queer Up North itself, Priscilla feels radically joyful at times and the ecstatic sight of Guy Pearce strapped atop a bus wrapped in sequins, with a ginormous silver cape flowing against the red desert behind him is worth the price of admission by itself – but Elliott’s Aussie cult classic is just part of the evening’s entertainment at HOME.

Brett Chapman’s It’s Queer Up North: Saving the Show explores the story of Queer Up North and the making of the new digital archive, celebrating the people, performances and legacy of a festival which helped shape Manchester’s status as a modern, inclusive LGBTQ+ city.

Following the films, Queer Up North invites the audience to head downstairs to HOME’s ground-floor bar for a celebratory party with DJ Kath McDermott, resident DJ at the legendary Flesh nights at Manchester’s Haçienda during the 1990s, on the decks.