Join film producer and drag hag L Cedeño Miller along with Drag Artist Pussy Noir to screen and discuss the historical fiction short film “Swann Queen” about the first documented drag queen, William Dorsey Swann
Join film producer, L Cedeño Miller (they/them pronouns) and Drag Artist Pussy Noir for a film screening of “Swann Queen”. William Dorsey Swann is the first recorded person in the United States who self-identified as a drag queen. Born enslaved in Maryland in 1860, Swann went on to organize clandestine drag balls in the District of Columbia. L Cedeño Miller and Pussy Noir will discuss this short historical fiction film, starring local drag artists Molasses and Pussy Noir, the archival research that inspired this story and how Swann’s legacy is reverberating through the activism of contemporary local drag artists.
L Cedeño Miller is a D.C. based film and media producer. L harnesses community and ancestral knowledge to create visual altars that honor histories relegated to the margins.
The Pussy Noir character developed into an androgynous entity within the nightclub circuit, museums and galleries in DC and in 2019 was chosen as a cultural leader and artist fellow for the Culture Caucus with the Reach Center at the Kennedy Center. See Pussy Noir live in her one-woman cabaret, “Sissy That,” now in its six year at the DC nightclub Trade.
