Nick Prokesch

The seats in the theatre are still empty when the performer – the artist – enters the frame. She speaks about a colonial flashback. She is haunted by a series of historic photographs of or taken by the Austrian ethnographer Paul Schebesta in the 1930s, in the Belgian colony of the Congo.

When all the world’s a stage, crafting identity and desire is a performance that develops with and without an audience. In this Austrian documentary, the seven queer- and lesbian-identified performers of Club Burlesque Brutal discuss their experiences with identity and power.