The figure of Salome has crossed millennia as the femme fatale par excellence. A heartbreaker, she seduces her uncle and stepfather Herod with her dance, and in exchange asks for the head of her crush, prophet John the Baptist (or Jokanaan, in a Hebrew derivation) – the only man who had rejected her.

In 1891, Oscar Wilde wrote a play based on this old tale, in which the princess is enchanting and terrifying; a luring virgin and a killer. Yet even before Wilde, as early as in the 4th century, Salome had already become associated with lust and sensuality through Saint Augustine, who described her erotic performance as inciting adultery in all who watched it. In 1876, Gustave Moreau painted a majestic, semi-nude Salome that would further cement that reputation.

Salome (and especially Wilde’s Salome) has inspired countless interpretations and has been performed numerous times across theatre, film, the visual arts, and literature. She has become an icon of independence and sexual freedom, embodying forms of proto-feminist empowerment and erotic rebellion. In film, since Alla Nazimova and Charles Bryant’s 1922 feature, queer elements have unfolded in diverse ways across different cinematic adaptations of the myth, from Carmelo Bene to Werner Schroeter, and even in one of Pedro Almodóvar’s early shorts.

Salome, Salome, Salome opens with the UK premiere of the unashamed sci-fi melodrama rom-com Salome by André Antônio, part of Surto & Deslumbramento, the Brazilian leading queer film collective of the last decade, in a lush, camp creation that relocates the legend to a working-class neighbourhood in the 21st century. Followed by Salome’s Last Dance by British enfant terrible Ken Russell, a delirious and delicious re-enactment of Wilde’s forbidden play. It concludes with the dreamlike Salome of textures, sensations and veils by Paris-based Mexican artist Teo Hernández.

Diva, spectre, maneater: from one film to the next, from baroque excess to underground experimentation, Salome multiplies herself, tracing connections across times, continents and narrative styles, always hypnotic and transgressive.