Four years in the making…
City of Queens takes an explosive look at the real lives of seven London drag queens. Pioneering a new approach to representing drag culture.
The stories in City of Queens are told from the spaces in which drag queens in London try to find their place and express themselves: bedrooms, clubs, parks, dressing rooms and everywhere in between.
Bimini Bon Boulash is one of the queens who features prominently in the film and we filmed them a few years ago when they first started drag, long before Ru Paul came to the UK.
At that point Tommy (Bimini) had just recovered from drug addiction and was starting to use drag to rebuild a new life. It’s uplifting to hear Bimini’s story first hand and seeing their inspiring rise to being fan favourite in Ru Paul’s Drag Race UK Season 2 - it’s one of several fascinating stories within the City of Queens film.
The excellent production quality allows the colour and sound to contextualise the story of this vibrant community.
The film premiered on Sky Documentaries at 9pm 26th June in the UK, followed by Sky Italy, Paramount Play10 in Australia, Peacock in the USA and Netflix UK.
In City of Queens, we worked tirelessly with a ground up approach, allowing the queens to speak their truth. For these beautiful humans and talented artists, drag is not a cheap thrill, it is a way of life.
The audience will laugh, cry, and feel the love that emanates through a community which shares hardships ranging from abuse and drug addiction to homophobia and racism within and outside of queer spaces. Most importantly, the queens give hope to a new generation longing to express their own uniqueness and to better understand the world around them.
City of Queens has been completed to a high production standard - produced by award winning production company, Great Guns. We shot the documentary in London and did the online, colour grade and sound mix in New York with Townhouse and Nice Shoes
CITY OF QUEENS HAS BEEN LICENSED GLOBALLY: NETFLIX UK, PEACOCK (USA) SKY UK, NOWTV, SKY ITALIA & PARAMOUNT PLAY10 (AUSTRALIA), WITH MORE FOLLOWING SHORTLY…
DIRECTOR + PRODUCER
As this is my first film, I am exceptionally proud of this project. Having a first film end up being not just feature length, but picked up by a big platforms like Netflix, Peacock, Sky, NowTV, Sky Italia and Paramount 10 Play feels really special.
I started City of Queens after I saw a video on Facebook live of my friend Elric (Chai Latte) being beaten up on the bus in Seven Sisters, for no other reason than being visibly queer and in drag. It was a shocking video to watch and appears in City of Queens.
I wanted to help in some way, and together with the help of award winning production company Great Guns, I created a skilled team and went to interview Elric in drag, and his mum (who had never seen him in drag before!).
It was important for me to try and humanise him, to return some of the dignity and humanity that he always deserved to be viewed with.
After that I started networking through London’s drag scene to find other interesting stories - beginning in London’s old gay hub, Soho and then moving out to the East London queens who are so special and unique. At venues like The Glory and events like Sink the Pink, the film started to take shape.
I have always been determined to spend my life telling queer stories and narratives to make up for the lack of recognisable figures and characters in film and on TV when I was growing up. It definitely has been and continues to be a driving force for me.