Includes a special live zoom introduction with queer film historian and Muscle Distribution founder Elizabeth Purchell!
São Paulo, 1983: Women’s soccer has just been legalized in Brazil. A group of rebellious young women form the Gayvotas Football Club and begin training for their first match. But as the team quickly becomes a media sensation, its members are forced to confront the prejudices of the conservative military dictatorship that they live under.
Banned shortly after its premiere at the 1983 São Paulo International Film Festival and never released outside of Brazil until now, Ícaro Martins and José Antonio Garcia’s Onda Nova: Gayvotas Football Club is a defiantly queer and gleefully anarchic sex comedy that still packs a subversive punch (or kick?) all these years later.
New 4K restoration by SPAMFLIX, courtesy of Muscle Distribution.
About Elizabeth Purchell:
Elizabeth Purchell is a Brooklyn-based queer film historian, programmer, filmmaker, and the founder of Muscle Distribution. She programs and hosts the monthly Queer Cinema: Lost and Found screening series at Austin Film Society and the weekly Weird Wednesday series at Alamo Drafthouse Brooklyn. She also co-programs and hosts the monthly queer film series and podcast Cruising the Movies at IFC Center. She was also on the programming team for the 2024 and 2025 iterations of Frameline. Her work has been shown at over two dozen international film festivals including BFI Flare, Frameline, and Outfest, as well as at venues like Anthology Film Archives, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and the Hammer Museum.
Freaky Fridays ticket prices include a free popcorn and soda or lemonade for all attendees! Alcohol can be purchased at Eden Bar. Regular food service will not be available for Freaky Friday events. So, come early, and fuel up outside for the night ahead!
1983, 103 minutes, Brazil, In Portuguese with English Subtitles, Directed by Ícaro Martins and José Antonio Garcia. Unrated (treat at NC-17)
“Unapologetic in its sexuality and queerness.”
– Daniel Allen, LOUD AND CLEAR
“An anarchic anything-goes spirit takes over New Wave, a proudly bisexual movie…it’s a movie about freedom made freely.”
– Filipe Furtado, BFI
“It offers us a glimpse of a world in which nobody cares about gender or sexuality – in which what matters is not what people are, but who they are.”
– Jennie Kermode, EYE FOR FILM
“Not long into the film you realise why it was banned - just a little too liberated, just a bit too much gender bending and sex and lightheartedness. It's the kind of film you're surprised hasn't become an international cult hit, screened at midnight in your favourite repertory every year.
– Umnia El-Neil, OBSCURAE
