The Queen of Pandora’s Box Film Premiere

Mike White premiered his new LGBTQ friendly short film on January 13th at The Majestic Theater. This film, titled “The Queen of Pandora’s Box,” follows a group of drag queens getting ready for a show while drama and serious topics arise.
White created “The Queen of Pandora’s Box” to help spread awareness of the historical struggles of the gay community. He knew he wanted the film to be really representative as it was written about LGBTQ members.
“Midwest and rural students don’t always get exposed to the themes that were is this film,” White said.
WSC student Stephanie Palma attended the premiere.
“”Pandora’s Box” and the Q&A after were amazing… the drag queens educated us a lot about their community,” Palma said.
White said that it seemed, “Really well received.”
As well as being well received, turnout was great. White was pleasantly surprised when 75 guests showed up.
“Turnout was great considering right now there’s so much COVID… as premiers go, it was larger than expected,” White said.
With such a successful premiere, one wouldn’t know that the entirety of “The Queen of Pandora’s Box” was shot with a faulty connector. White said all the footage came back bad, and it took six weeks to correct.
White said he spent, “Hours and hours and hours fixing every piece of footage.”
White wasn’t the only one putting hours into his films. White gives credit to Marc Fustfus for being the executive producer in all of his film projects, and to Shelby Hagerdon for cowriting “The Queen of Pandora’s Box” and starring in another one of his short films, “The Ghost in Her.”
For “The Queen of Pandora’s Box”, this is only the beginning. The film will be going on tour to LGBTQ events such as USD Pride and South Dakota Pride.

Photos by Whitney Winter