Silver Stiletto filmmaker back with a tv drag

Fresh from wowing audiences at film festivals worldwide with his short film about an ex-SAS soldier turned vigilante drag queen, writer and film producer Craig Rossiter is at it again with a new television pilot this time involving an untalented drag queen, a gay bartender and a shifty scientist who decides to test a new ‘genie-like’ drug in a gay bar. 

Rossiter is currently seeking crowd funding for the new project, The Jiniri, which developed after one of the actors in his previous film Silver Stiletto asked him to write something specifically for him.

The Jiniri, which is the word used to describe a group of genies, is about a tragic and untalented drag queen, Sara-Belle Paulsey, who unknowingly participates in a scientific experiment when she accepts a drug from a young scientist which effectively grants a wish resulting in her gaining the powers of telekinesis and precognition. Sara-Belle’s bartender friend, Sandy, also takes the drug but ends up becoming straight.

The series then follows the two characters as they try to find the young scientist after he mysteriously disappears in order to change Sandy back to being “normal”.

Rossiter, who has spent three months writing the pilot and two more episodes of the series, has now launched an IndieGoGo crowd sourcing campaign which he hopes will receive support from the wider community and from fans of Silver Stiletto.

“While Silver Stiletto had a strong thread of revenge running through it, The Jiniri provides an opportunity to explore the concept of heterophobia and a second-coming out for one of the main characters,” Rossiter says.

“It wasn’t that I necessarily set out to make another project about drag queens.

“A lot of people fell in love with Silver Stiletto and wanted to see more of that world and it just seemed like I could kill two birds with one fabulous stone.”

After screening at over 13 film festival internationally to date including Palm Springs, Uppsala, and Frameline36, Silver Stiletto had its Australian premiere on Thursday, February 21 when it was screened in competition at My Queer Career at the Mardi Gras Film Festival. 

For more information or to help donate, visit http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-jiniri