Queer Fight Club to Make Its Debut at the Alamo Drafthouse

A new kind of queer event is set to make its debut at the Alamo Drafthouse – Sloan’s Lake on Tuesday, December 19. Queer Fight Club is an LGBTQ+-focused monthly film event that showcases films involving queer icons fighting back. In addition, there will be a free 30-minute self defense demonstration courtesy of Worth the Fight Boxing.

Doors open for the premiere event at 6:00 p.m., and the self defense demo starts at 6:30 p.m. and goes until 7:00 p.m. Then, audiences will head into the theater for a special showing of Anna and the Apocalypse—a 2017 campy Christmas zombie musical with a lesbian lead. 

Queer Fight Club will be a monthly event and film programming will include films such as Tangerine, Assassination Nation, 120 BPM, Thelma and Louise, Basic Instinct, and Paris is Burning. 

Queer Fight Club is the brainchild of Professor Andy Scahill of Rainbow Cult and Gladys Santiago of Worth the Fight Boxing. 

Scahill is the founder of Rainbow Cult and a professor of film at the University of Colorado Denver who specializes in the study of subcultural audiences and the emotional experience of cinema-going. 

Santiago is the owner of Worth the Fight Boxing, a woman, POC, and gay owned boxing studio in Denver that offers boxing, strength training, and yoga classes in a safe, non-judgmental environment.

“It’s really all about feeling safe this season. Hopefully none of us ever have to defend ourselves from assault, but according to the FBI, antigay hate crimes rose 19% last year, and anti-transgender bias crimes increased 35%. Knowing how to fight back is an important first step,” Scahill says of the inclusion of self-defense demonstrations in the event.

Rainbow Cult hopes that Queer Fight Club will help to create a new “third space” where queer individuals can feel safe, connected, inspired, and empowered. 

Third spaces are defined as “Places where people spend time between home (‘first’ place) and work (‘second’ place). They are locations where we exchange ideas, have a good time, and build relationships” according to theory by sociologist Ray Oldenburg.

Queer third spaces are important for building and maintaining community, especially in the current political climate where anti-LGBTQ rhetoric has pervaded across the country and the world. 

Hosted in the Barfly Lounge at the Alamo Drafthouse – Sloan’s Lake, Queer Fight Club is an event that film-loving LGBTQ individuals won’t want to miss. 

Graphic courtesy of Queer Fight Club