ORFEAS2021: A Queer Sci-Fi Video-Opera

Join us for the Toronto premiere screening of ORFEAS2021, a queer sci-fi video-opera, coming to Canada for the second time only.

The screening will be followed by a Q&A and audience discussion with Foivos Dousos (via Zoom), one of the creators of ORFEAS2021 and one half of the Athens-based performance art duo FYTA (https://www.f-y-t-a.com/artworks/). +

Loosely adapting the music of Claudio Monteverdi's 1607 opera L'Orfeo with a totally new Greek libretto and conceptual approach, ORFEAS2021 is a retro-futurist story of utopian politics, ideological conflicts, supernatural leaders and totalitarian spectacle.

The opera is influenced by and dedicated to the memory of Zak Kostopoulos/Zackie Oh, a queer performer and activist, murdered in 2018 in the centre of Athens.

Cyberpunk queer pirates against rainbow homo-capitalist normies. Revolution vs reformism; logic vs affect. The trappings of post-internet identity politics through a contemporary take of the myth of Orpheus. Oscillating between operatic melodrama, queer DIY collage, 80s-inspired post-trash hauntology and VR/AI aesthetics, the film creates a kaleidoscopic take on political purity, alternative histories and institutional critique. The first gay prime minister of Greece struggles to carry the legacy of LGBT history at a time of post-truth alt-right dystopia. The mysterious algorithm of the collective unconscious and heavy-handed tradition of “the land of heroes” proves unshakable. Will liberal Europe and its so-called ‘freedom of speech’ provide an alternative or is it just another platform for neo-reactionary culture wars?