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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Peter-Astrid Kane in San Francisco

‘Cinema is my religion and the Castro is our Vatican’: shakeup at landmark San Francisco venue stuns locals

The closed Castro Theatre in April 2020.
The closed Castro Theatre in April 2020. Photograph: John G Mabanglo/EPA

For years, the San Francisco underground drag performer and cinephile Peaches Christ has filled the city’s renowned Castro Theatre with her Midnight Mass series, juxtaposing cult film screenings with live, drag-parody re-enactments and onstage interviews. These loving but irreverent late-night events have been a staple of LGBTQ+ culture at the city’s pre-eminent arthouse theater, itself one of the most visible landmarks in San Francisco’s most famous gayborhood.

As Peaches Christ puts it: “Cinema has been my religion, and the Castro is our Vatican.”

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