Cinephil has sold Valerie Kontakos’ documentary “Queen of the Deuce,” which charts the rise of Chelly Wilson, the queen of the porn industry in 1970s New York, to several key territories. The film premiered at Doc NYC and is now playing in the International Competition at the Thessaloniki Intl. Documentary Festival.
Greece’s ERT, Canada’s Doc Channel, Switzerland’s Radio Télévision Suisse and Israel’s Channel 8 came on board at the funding stage. It has now been acquired by Spanish streamer FilmIn, Swedish broadcaster UR, and U.S. theatrical distributor Greenwich Entertainment.
The film follows Wilson from pre-World War II Greece to New York, where she rose to become a major figure on the porn circuit in Times Square from the late 1960s to the mid 1980s. She is shown to be a trailblazing, taboo-breaking entrepreneur and an unconventional matriarch. It is presented as an empowering story of survival, as well as an alternative take on cultural history at a time of the rise of feminism, the sexual revolution and the emergence of the gay liberation movement.
Cinephil managing director Olivier Tournaud said: “‘Queen of the Deuce’ is an ‘only in New York’ story that is fun, edgy and universal. After a stellar premiere at Doc NYC and now Thessaloniki, we couldn’t be more thrilled that Chelly’s story is beginning to travel the world and finding partners to take her legacy global.”
The film is produced by Despina Pavlaki and Valerie Kontakos of Exile Films and Ed Barreveld of Storyline Entertainment. The executive producers are Barreveld and Kontakos as well as Don Walters and Bondi Wilson Walters.
The film’s co-producer is ERT, and it is produced in association with Channel 8, Radio Télévision Suisse and Doc Channel, with the participation of Canada Media Fund, Rogers Documentary Fund and Ontario Creates, and the support of the Greek Film Center, the European Union’s Creative Europe Program – MEDIA, Jewish Story Partners, Canadian Film or Video Production Tax Credit, and OMDC Film and Television Tax Credit.
