Films

TRAMPS! FILM: EMC FESTIVAL
QUEER 80S LONDON

TRAMPS!
SCREENING PARTY
Presented by Groovescooter 
for EMC Festival

TRAMPS! Film screens at:
• 6.30pm, Thur Dec 1, 2022
• 8.50pm, Thur Dec 1, 2022
Golden Age Cinema + Bar
Commonwealth St, Surry Hills

▣ BUY SYDNEY TIX

“[A] thrilling, far-reaching kaleidoscopic collage of a documentary.” [Screen International]
 
“What could have been just another exercise in nostalgia instead emerges as a valuable picture of a grassroots creative movement.” [Eye For Film]
 
4.5/5 [Attitude]

In a queer and colourful reaction against the austerity of punk, and just as the ‘80s threatened to dawn, a group of young squat-dwelling, gender non-conformist misfits helped transform music, fashion and art worldwide. Like a scene from Liquid Sky, some of these trend-aliens and Bowie/Roxy Music inspired freaks would leave their squats at night sporting wildly creative home-made outfits and lurid space-age makeup, to join the queue outside Covent Garden’s infamous club night Blitz. Their aim was to make it past the club’s doorman, Steve Strange (later of Visage). Those who made it in were called the “Blitz Kids” and inside they could really let their hair up and dance or act-out alongside future stars like Boy George. Other similarly decked-out radicals were arguably more colourful, creative and open-minded. They either didn’t get in to the Blitz club or had no interest in even bothering to try. It’s this second group of outsiders who are celebrated and documented in Kevin Hegge’s TRAMPS! Legendary artists like John Maybury, Princess Julia, punk designer Judy Blame, gay filmmaker/activist Derek Jarman and maverick Australiann-born performance/fashion shapeshifter Leigh Bowery. In his attempt to chronicle this diverse and definition-defying zeitgeist, director Kevin Hegge is more interested in repositioning the vibrant and anarchic scene as an art movement rather than a pop culture movement, highlighting some of the enduring art activists alongside friends and colleagues who were tragically lost to the AIDS crisis. In the process Hegge draws a stark distinction between the creative renegades he interviews – who were often politically-driven in their artistic expression – and the synthesized popstars who rode the bandwagon of a media-hyped and meaningless “New Romantic” catchall.