Drag performers debut campy film series in Tampa next week

Drag performer wearing a long nose sticks their face through a hole in a patterned board outside Sun-Ray Cinema in Tampa. Credit: corianderspice/Instagram

Camp is the new cool, as Sapphic Sun writer Evelyn Long declared in the queer newspaper’s June issue.

And while the irreverent countercultural movement reached mainstream success with the likes of Chappell Roan and RuPaul’s Drag Race, it’s also being coopted and diluted.

“Trump supporters are commending one another for ‘serving cunt,’” Long writes. “How can we as queer people stay rooted in the expressions and sensibilities we’ve created, and how do we protect them from losing their power?”

Movie buffs and drag performers help answer that question with a campy history lesson from before the reign of John Waters or even “Paris is Burning.”

Sun-Ray Cinema hosts the first “Q The Camp!” screening this week with emcees Coriander Spice, Evve Addams and Cinna Honey Bunny.

They’ll watch the documentary, “The Queen,” which follows the 1967 Miss All-America Camp Beauty Pageant featuring a legendary monologue from Crystal LaBeija.

“Please come, I’m in financial crisis,” Spice begs in a social media post.

Tickets are $15 for Q The Camp! on Wednesday, July 29, in Tampa.