The Meeting of Two Queens

Cecilia Barriga's cult video montage reimagines Hollywood icons Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich as two queens falling in love in a silent-film style queer fantasy.

Chilean-born video artist Cecilia Barriga crafts a fourteen-minute montage that splices scenes from Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich's most famous films, recasting the two legendary stars as queens who fall for one another. Familiar motifs such as the cigarette and the glance from beneath a wide-brimmed hat are recontextualised within a queer narrative, all rendered in a silent-film aesthetic. A rainmaker features on the soundtrack of this cult favourite.