Decades before Paris Is Burning and Rupaul’s Drag Race, this ground-breaking documentary about the 1967 Miss All-America Camp Beauty Pageant introduced competitive drag to the world, along with LGBT icon and activist Flawless Sabrina. Watch for Andy Warhol, one of the pageant’s judges.

“The gender identity and racial undercurrents of “The Queen” have a prescient quality, foreshadowing some of the tensions that the LGBTQ community is dealing with today.” (San Francisco Chronicle)

“Whether pushing the camera close to the performers or zooming in from afar to survey them intimately, Simon captures the lavish life of theatrical imagination that inspires them and makes gender itself seem like an urgent performance.” (The New Yorker)

“The movie is by turns a historic document, a milestone of queer filmmaking…” (The Georgia Straight)

Saturday, September 7
Doors 3:15 pm | Movie 3:45 pm
Advance tickets $10.50 HERE | $12.50 at the door

*Minors permitted in the balcony! Must be 19+ w/ID for bar service and main floor seating.
**Rio Theatre Groupons and passes OK! Please redeem at the door.

THE QUEEN (Frank Simon, 1968 / PG / 68 mins) Jack is 24, sometimes he’s a drag queen named Sabrina. In 1967, as Sabrina, he’s the mistress of ceremonies at a national drag queen contest in New York City. The camera goes behind the scenes, recording the rehearsals leading up to the contest, the conversations in the dressing room (about draft boards, sexual identity and sex-change operations, and being a drag queen), and the jealousies that emerge before and after the competition. Jack introduces us to Richard, a young man who becomes Jack’s protégé. As Miss Harlow, Richard enters the contest. One of his principal competitors is Miss Crystal, who’s from Manhattan. Who will win the crown?