Reimagining famil
The duo’s latest video/short film, is a kaleidoscopic vision of a slice of queer reality
Mam’khulu Queenie is a woman of sparse words and quiet grace. She is my grandmother’s sister — in that nebulous sense in black families where a cousin is a sister and an uncle is a grandfather and every woman who has ever held you is your mother.
Mam’khulu Queenie’s recipes, including her coveted instructions for sweet date cake, rest in a binder that she keeps in her room divider. Like most gogos, this room divider is where she keeps photographs of her family, alongside lace doilies, brass vases, plastic roses, cups and ceramics.
It’s unsurprising then that something in me jolted when I watched the visuals for Queenie — FAKA’s newest, astonishing music video-cum-short film and single.
The video opens with a shot of a room divider: framed images of Desire Marea and Fela Gucci adorn the shelves in a variety of picture frames. Many of the images are iconic such as their celebrated shoot for Bubblegum Club, in which the duo stands on dusty ground in black leotards and fishnet tights, photographed by internationally renowned Dutch photographer Viviane Sassen. Others seem older and more intimate.
As the camera pulls back, we view FAKA over time, and their treasured snapshots rest in front of gilded ceramic plates, acting as markers and framed as beloved effigies.
This first image, as Queenie’s thrumming, Angel-Ho-produced beat unfurls in the background, presents a memory, and I can’t help but think of my Mam’khulu.
The video, directed by filmmaker Jabu Nadia Newman and Cape Town performance artist Luvuyo Equiano Nyawose, traverses the boundaries between short motion picture, fashion film and conceptual videography. Piecing together confessional voicenotes, muted cinematography, free-form choreography and lush decorative set pieces, Queenie offers a sparklingly fresh vision of queerness that flickers between viewpoints like a cheeky apparition.
We get our first glimpse of FAKA in the flesh in a space that appears to be an empty school hall. Fela and Desire appear as bold incarnations of kwaito singer Lebo Mathosa, crowned with flowing honey-brown curls, glistening metallic make-up and angelic white outfits. They stand against a blue tiedye backdrop, bulbs flashing as they pose for the camera.
Over the beat, we hear a voice confessing: “I was never given the luxury of discovering my sexuality. I think, at the age of three, I was told that I was gay.”
This idea of luxury is immediately subverted as Desire’s rich and syrupy vocals reply in the song’s opening lyrics.
They dance and move around the