Sex Workers Celebrated In New AGNSW Film Program
Image: A still from 'Showgirls'. Source: Umbrella Entertainment via TMDB
By HOPE PRATT
Celebrate the legacy of sex work on the silver screen in the Art Gallery of NSW’s latest cinema program, By hook or by hustle.
Each film centres sex workers, who are a central part of our queer community, and many of the films in the program centre explictly queer characters.
Whether it’s iconic 70s flicks like Klute (Sunday August 25), influential but underseen boundary-pushers like the gay Filipino film Macho Dancer (Sunday September 8) or a 35mm showing of campy cult classic Showgirls (Sunday September 29), By hook or by hustle delves into the layered and complex world of sex work.
Moving beyond voyeurism and cliché, the program instead explores the complex, playful, and nuanced inner worlds of these characters that defy social taboo and censorship.
From Chantal Akerman and RW Fassbinder to Spike Lee and Paul Verhoeven, enjoy thoughtful and evocative character focused stories about sex workers that expose the precarities of the ideal ‘virtuous’ woman and the crises of masculine spectatorship.
Beyond fictional work, the series includes three genre-bending documentaries Portrait of Jason, Dressed in blue, and Kamikaze hearts, that prelude the sex-positivity movement in their nuanced approach to tales of porn stars, streetwalkers and houseboys.
Featuring nuanced stories of queerness and femininity, friendship and camaraderie and in-depth character studies set against the backdrop of neon lights and bordellos, By hook or by hustle is looking to explore a roster of characters seeking their own erotic expression and agency in vast cinematic worlds.
When? Wednesdays and Sundays until 6 October 2024, times vary
Where? Domain Theatre, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Naala Nura, our south building, Lower level 3
Tickets? Free, but bookings are recommended
