Fruitcakes: Dawn of Drag Brings Finland's First Drag Show Back to the Screen
A documentary about Finland's first drag show, Happy Gays, will have its world premiere on Saturday, 7 November, at the 30th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (PÖFF) in Estonia. The film, Fruitcakes: Dawn of Drag, is in the Doc@PÖFF International Competition, according to The Hollywood Reporter, which also premiered the film's trailer ahead of the screening.
The show began in the late 1970s, when Finland saw its first drag performances. Its 1980s run became a local legend. The film follows the people who made it happen, and it does so through archive footage from that decade.
Two of the performers at the centre of the story are Mummo and Jolanda. Mummo was one of Finland's first openly gay men, and he performed in Happy Gays. Jolanda was his best friend, and he performed too. Mummo was killed in his home in Helsinki in 1988.
Jolanda is now a retired archivist. He opened his archive for the film more than 30 years after Mummo's death, and that material gives the documentary much of its look back. The Hollywood Reporter names him as the archivist who made this possible.
The Finnish filmmaker Vesa Kuosmanen wrote and directed the film, and he edited it together with Jussi Sandhu. Mikko Kelloniemi shot the cinematography, and Sandra Enkvist produced it, according to the film's sales catalogue. The original Finnish title is Lumppukuningattaret. PÖFF describes it as a Finland-Denmark co-production. Rise and Shine is handling world sales, which means it will find buyers for the film in markets beyond its home countries.
The film's catalogue entry says Jolanda, described there as a retired archivist and a reluctant queer pioneer, teams up with a new generation of drag artists to revive the 1980s show. That is the modern thread running alongside the archive: older performers and younger ones working on stage together.
The premiere arrives in a festival that is marking its 30th year. Estonia's postal service, Omniva, is issuing a commemorative stamp for the anniversary. A Tallinn tram carries artwork by the Estonian animation director Priit Pärn, and the festival has opened three exhibitions to mark the edition.
For audiences in Tallinn, the premiere gives the film its first public screening. Buyers and sales agents at the festival will be watching for what comes next, and the film's route to other screens will depend on those decisions.
