Experiencing Interruptions?

Queen

While visiting their estranged grandfather in a rural trailer park, a teenager searches for their father's ethos amid socioeconomic, environmental, racial, and gendered binaries.

  • Kai Nealis
    Director
  • Kai Nealis
    Writer
  • Thee Suburbia America
    Writer
  • Kai Nealis
    Producer
  • Thee Suburbia America
    Key Cast
  • Kellik Dawson
    Key Cast
  • Candice Tiffany Gordon
    Key Cast
  • John Burger
    Key Cast
  • Alisha Day
    Key Cast
  • Sarah Caneles
    Key Cast
  • Joseph Simpson
    Key Cast
  • Q.
    Key Cast
  • Zach Chapple
    Sound
  • Patrick Pearce
    Sound
  • Kai Nealis
    Directors of Photography
  • Jacob Schaffel-Scherrer
    Directors of Photography
  • Tyler Macri
    Assisstant Camera
  • Randall Taylor
    Music
  • Patti Smith
    Music
  • Thee Suburbia America
    Music
  • Zach Chapple
    Sound Design
  • Ryan Graves
    Color
  • Project Type:
    Experimental, Short, Student
  • Genres:
    Experimental Narrative, Queer Cinema
  • Runtime:
    9 minutes 14 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    January 16, 2024
  • Production Budget:
    3,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Super 16mm to HD
  • Aspect Ratio:
    1.66.1
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    Yes - Ithaca College
Director Biography - Kai Nealis

Kai Nealis graduated from Ithaca College in Upstate New York with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Cinema and Photography Production and Latin American Studies. His work ranges from the documentary study of site-specific economic and environmental concerns in Latin America to narrative inquiries into social realist issues in contemporary domestic American life. The direction of his research continues to be influenced by the LatinX community as well youth urban mentorship initiatives and nonprofit teaching.

Focusing on issues of land use, class, and globalization, his narrative films have been exhibited most notably at The Cannes Film Festival and the Binghamton Babylon Film Festival, among others. His video art has been featured in the Ladder exhibition, a pop-up gallery in Upstate New York in 2018, and in Feast Your Eyes at Root Division in San Francisco in 2019.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

I made this film after a friend, prominent New York City drag queen Thee Suburbia America, and I struck up a conversation after one of their performances in early 2018. We wanted to portray drag in a way that it hadn't since earlier queer cinematic classics like Jennie Livingston’s iconic 1990 documentary 'Paris Is Burning'. In an era where iconic drag queens were buying ranches and leasing fracking rights to oil companies, what did it mean to be a big young black drag performer in rural places like Upstate New York?

I wrote a short script for my college thesis film based around the loose narrative of a teen discovering their father's roots as a drag performer. We wanted to make this film collaboratively, and for its core to draw you in just like a great performance might at a club. The film would be as much an expression of Suburbia's talent as a performer as it was a narrative of discovery. It had to rely on camera work and an atmospheric sense of place in a rural trailer park. It also had to draw the viewer closer in a slow cinema sense, not so heavily referencing the camp and gore of 'Pink Flamingos'.

Shot on Super 16mm, this film took six years to finish. While drag continued to increase in prominence in the public eye, we chose to depict a social and geographic landscape that is foreign to many iconic drag portrayals in the queer cinematic landscape of the 2010s and 2020s. We did reference early John Waters as well as experimental minimalist films about working-class characters in small communities like those of Kelly Reichardt.

In the end, it became Queen. It's a film about Suburbia's evocative home life with a teenager, as well as their explosive drag persona. Suburbia's story, while avant-garde, is a portrait of binaries. They are socioeconomic, environmental, racial, and gendered.