Yoni Leyser, whose last film DESIRE WILL SET YOU FREE was about the queer Berlin party scene, engages in a kind of pop archeology of the North American scene of the 80s and 90s in QUEERCORE – HOW TO PUNK A REVOLUTION. From 1985 to 1991 Bruce LaBruce and G.B. Jones published the queer punk fanzine “J.D.s“. Since there was no queer punk scene in Toronto, they were inspired by Guy Debord‘s situationist manifesto “The Spectacle and its Society“ and started their own movement. The punks ostentatiously stood against what they viewed as the “bourgeois“ ambitions of groups like “Act Up!“ and were against assimilation. It isn‘t clear from Leyser‘s film if queer bands like the gay pop-punk of Pansy Division or the lesbian hardcore band Tribe 8 and Team Dresch would still be a reference to later riot grrrl bands like Bikini Kill, Babes in Toyland, and L7 without the fanzine. Kathleen Hanna from Bikini Kill talked about using the J.D.s strategy in her first interview with the mainstream media. When asked how big the riot grrrl movement was, she said the scene was huge and there were feminist punk meetings all over the country. As likable as Jon Ginoli (Pansy Division), Donna Dresch (Team Dresch), and Lynn Breedlove (Tribe 8) are, it‘s obvious that the scene was very white. Tribe 8 were the only ones with a black bass player - who doesn‘t talk in the film. Bruce LaBruce says in the beginning of the film that his swastika earring got him thrown out of bars of the very middle-class gay scene in Toronto and that the punks didn‘t accept him either. He would have had problems with the not-so-middle-class berlin gay scene too, which is also tied to the (post) punk scene.

Hannes Stein

Translation: Elinor Lewy