By Token Homo
This article was initially commissioned and published by the brilliant CINEMA OF TOMORROW for their ‘Programmers Of Tomorrow‘ initiative, a community development project for first-time film programmers and exhibitors. You can read their zine HERE which also includes insightful pieces by CINEMA OF TOMORROW and Kulraj Phullar.
BAR TRASH is a celebration of cult cinema that now serves DIY queer screen culture twice a week across North/East London without ever really showing a ‘queer film’. Since launching in 2022, we have grown from audiences of 16 in one venue to hosting regular capacity crowds across three.
One of the kindest audience reviews we’ve ever received described BAR TRASH as “The most warm and inclusive place to watch the most charming and deranged nonsense”. Having recently celebrated our 240th event, many audience members return show after show, forming a wonderfully warm, kind, and inclusive film community. What’s our secret? Well, it’s all in the name…
My nom de cinéma — Token Homo — was inspired by an interview with prolific exploitation filmmaker David DeCoteau, director of CREEPOZOIDS (1987), several PUPPET MASTERS, and the 1313 franchise (“I was sort of the ‘token homo’ in the business, and most of the day I’d be filming naked women and crashing cars”, quoted in ‘Meet David DeCoteau, the King of Homoerotic On Demand Schlock’, Will Sloan). I used it when I started blogging about horror, examining marginal queer creatures in 20th Century genre cinema (my programming happy place). It transferred IRL when I launched an ongoing screening series based on this work, QUEER HORROR NIGHTS.
Intrigued by this, Genesis Cinema invited me to collaborate on a new project to help re-establish community at the heart of their venue following COVID. Audiences had stopped hanging out in their bar, too used to the pandemic’s protocols, and vital sales were down. I pitched ‘BAR TRASH’ as a drinks-forward, weekly bar event celebrating alternative screen histories. Securing £1k from BFI FAN’s ‘Film Feels Curious’ helped launch a season of 6 films, starting with CREATURE WITH THE ATOM BRAIN (1955) on 15 June 2022. We have been making mayhem ever since, expanding to more venues and reaching new audiences (the less said about going viral on TikTok the better…).
The name BAR TRASH was always intended to be a collective noun rather than a cinephile aesthetic, although the two overlap. It’s a shared statement of identity and defiance. The birth of cinema as a mass entertainment industry saw audiences attend multiple times a week for an affordable price. In the 1910s and ‘20s, American nickelodeons and store-front theatres offered social spaces where marginalised audiences made their own screen culture rather than that handed down by the industry (‘Screen Culture’, Richard Butsch). Reviving this ‘pro-social’ form of cinema has become my obsession, and whilst our initial £1 tickets are no longer viable, most are £3.50.
I have continued hosting BAR TRASH as Token Homo for two reasons. Firstly, I want to make it clear that the show is unapologetically queer-led and trans-inclusive (a ‘red’ or ‘green’ flag, depending on your POV). Despite or maybe because of this, my introduction to THE EVILD DEAD (1981) with a tearfully autobiographical social history of HIV/AIDS led to walkouts from some of the film’s unsuspecting fanboys… Secondly, the name liberates my larger-than-life stage persona (I’m actually quite introverted), earning equal billing with the diverse community of queer cabaret artists who now perform regularly at my shows.
One question still gets asked more than others: “Is BAR TRASH a queer night?”. I see ‘queer’ as a disruptive aesthetic like ‘punk’ that’s about creating alternative culture outside of — and often scorned by — the mainstream whilst re-purposing elements of that mainstream to radical effect. Our films might not be ‘queer’, but the way we watch them together profoundly is. We break rules of normative cinema by using gimmicks, call-backs, sing-alongs, intermissions, quizzes, review cards, and weird celebration cakes, all underscored by the perpetual mixing of drinks. These deliberate, community-building disruptions have become our shared social rituals and create strong, lasting memories. Together, we talk about what’s happening in the wider world and raise funds for social causes we care about.
That simple-seeming ambition of a weekly bar show has resulted in a huge amount of creative effort and a deep commitment to inclusive hospitality, making newcomers and old hands feel equally welcome. BAR TRASH might only serve non-sensical cinema, but by making every event a shared social experience, it has become real life.
Photographs of Flying Saucers and Loose Willis by Chris Harvey aka The Showbiz Scene