Queercore: How to Punk a Revolution

A delightfully ragged documentary both documents a historical cultural movement in the LGBTQI+ community, and serves as motivation to create more inclusive, diverse spaces today. What happens when the community you need is not the community you have? Tell yourself it exists over and over, make fan zines that fabricate hordes of queer punk revolutionaries, create subversive movies, and distribute those movies widely – and slowly, the community you’ve fabricated might become a real and radical heartbeat that spreads internationally. This is the story that Queercore: How to Punk a Revolution tells, from the start of a pseudo-movement in the mid-1980s, intended to punk the punk scene, to the widespread rise of artists who used radical queer identity to push back equally against gay assimilation and homophobic punk culture. Interviewees discuss homophobia, gender, feminism, AIDS, assimilation, sex, and, of course, art. The extensive participant list includes Bruce LaBruce, John Waters, Justin Vivian Bond, Penny Arcade, Kathleen Hanna, Kim Gordon, and many more. Encompassing a breadth of history and influence, though interviews, clips from movies, zines, concerts, and actions iconic to the movement, steeped in the radical queer, anti-capitalist, DIY, and give-no-fucks approach as queercore itself, the movie reveals the perspectives and experiences of bands, moviemakers, writers, and other outsiders, taking audiences inside the creation of the community – and art – so desperately needed by the same queers it encompassed. (Sophia Lanza-Weil)

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Direction: Yony Leyser

Script: Yony Leyser

Cinematography: Nina Berfelde, Tom Ehrhardt, Kornelia Kugler, Kurtis Gnagey, Aurora Halal, Florian Lampersberger, Danielle Mathias, Chris Vargas, Sasha Kulak, Sarah Daggett, Erika Ochoa, Cabot MCnenly

Editing: Ilko Davidov

Sound: Cornelius Rapp

Music: Hyenaz (Kate Fischer, Adrienne Teicher)

Actors: Bruce LaBruce, G.B. Jones, Genesis Breyer POrridge, John Waters, Justin Vivian Bond, Lynn Breedlove, Silas Howard, Pansy Division, Penny Arcade, Kathleen Hanna, Kim Gordon, Deke Elash, Tom Jennings, Team Dresch

Production: Desire Productions, Totho Productions

Producers: Thomas Janze

Co-producers: Yony Leyser

Executive producer: Nina Berfelde

Narration: Yony Leyser

Format: DCP

Color: Color, B&W

Production Country: USA, Germany

Production Year: 2017

Duration: 80'

Contact: Desire Productions

Awards/Distinctions: Best Film – Athens OutView FF 2018, Felix Award – Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival 2017, Best Queer Documentary – Melinka Festival 2017, Audience Award – Filmfest Homochrom 2017, Audience Award – Soundwatch Music FF 2017

Yony Leyser

Filmography

2010 William S. Burroughs: A Man Within
2015 Desire Will Set You Free (fiction)
2017 Queercore: How To Punk A Revolution 2023 Chokehole: Drag Wrestlers do Deutschland (short)