Synopsis

Bubbles Aweigh tells the compelling and comic stories of a swim team preparing for the Gay Games V in Amsterdam. Intercut with personal interviews of individual swimmers is a chronicle of the meetings and rehearsals leading up to one of the most competitive event of the Games: the Pink Flamingo Relay, a fiercely contested and hysterical drag relay swimming race. Follow West Hollywood Aquatics as they develop an interpretive dance version of the birth of Amsterdam complete with dancing tulips and their secret weapon: a 6’6” Queen Beatrix.

Bubbles Aweigh features fascinating interviews, dramatic races, beautiful 35mm underwater footage, and is set to music written by the incomparable Roddy Bottum. But it's more than a portrait of individual competitors. Through its documentation of the kaleidoscopic experience of a quarter of a million gay people coming together in Amsterdam, the film sheds light on the triumphs and complexities of gay life at the turn of the millennium.