Men in Heels

BACKGROUND Throughout pop culture drag has been represented as effeminate, comic relief, and a radical expression of identity (Too Wong Foo (1995), Priscilla (1994), Mrs. Doubtfire (1993)). Documentaries on queer culture (Paris is Burning (1991), Tongues Untied (1989)) echo these depictions. But if drag queens have distinct identities from the men beneath their makeup, where are the gender borderlands? If drag permits a gender escape, where does the 'man' end and the 'persona' begin? In the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered) civil rights social movement, drag queens are dissidents who perform resistance through gender-bending. SIGNIFICANCE Men in Heels (50m22s) documents these borderlands, contrasting characters' drag identities and one-on- one interviews during the dragging process using mirrors and a voyeuristic lens. Including New York City activism, nightlife, fetish/kink, humor, and abstraction, the film joins the discussion on the exploration of gender identity in modern America. Personal narratives provide an ethnographic and emotional gravitas missing in many pop cultural representations of drag. CONTRIBUTION Men in Heels has screened in New York (Metropolitan, Excelsior), Vilnius, Lithuania (Baltic Pride), and Vietnam, including the US Embassy and La Cinemathèque (Hanoi) for National Coming Out Day, the first Hanoi International Queer Film Festival (HIQFF), and Viet Pride in Ho Chi Minh City (Spade Studio). A shorter version of the film (9m47s) has been licensed to OUT TV / Proudvision (Canada & Europe), an international LGBT WebTV network, to reach audiences in countries with LGBT restrictions.