Venus Boyz

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Movie
German title Venus Boyz
Original title Venus Boyz
Country of production Switzerland , USA , Germany
original language English
Publishing year 2002
length 102 minutes
Rod
Director Gabriel Baur
script Gabriel Baur
production Gabriel Baur, Kurt Maeder
music David Shiller
camera Sophie Maintigneux
cut Salome Pitschen , Daniela Roderer , Jean Vites
occupation

Venus Boyz is a Swiss-German movie about changing gender identities among drag kings , transgenders and gender activists. The feature film, made by director and author Gabriel Baur and released in 2002, sees itself as a mixture of documentary and feature film and is set in New York , London and Berlin . Gabriel Baur spent five years making the film.

action

The film Venus Boyz by Gabriel Baur deals thematically with the question of the understanding of male and female, man and woman in our society today, mainly using the example of the drag king and transgender scene in New York, London and Berlin. Baur also questions common ideals of beauty.

Venus Boyz begins with a Drag King and Transgender Night in New York in which the actors move beyond gender boundaries. Women become men - some for one night, others for their entire lives. The drag kings in New York appear in clubs and transform into male alter egos, parody them, explore male eroticism and power strategies.

The film then moves to London, where women experiment with hormones and become new men and cyborgs. Baur illuminates the phenomenon of masculinity and stages the transformation from one gender to the other as a performance, subversion or existential necessity.

Protagonists

The people who appear in Venus Boyz are all personally involved in the subject matter of the film.

As Hans Scheirl, Austrian artist and filmmaker says about the film, the characters and protagonists in the film influence each other through their participation:

"Mainly I realize that what happens here is that a trans-personal protagonist, or a protagonist-multiplicity is created. Every character has an effect on the perception of every other character, so I think this movie is futuristic. "

- Hans Scheirl

The people who play in Venus Boyz are all personalities in the scene in which they move and count among other things. a .:

  • The Haitian-American performer, actress and gender activist DRED
  • Drag King pioneer Diane Torr
  • Gender variant visual artist Del Lagrace Volcano
  • Berlin performer and quick-change artist Bridge Markland
  • Artist and filmmaker Hans Scheirl
  • Visual artist Svar Simpson
  • Gender theorist Judith Jack Halberstam
  • The performers and artists Philly Abe, Shelly Mars, Mo Fischer, Storme Webber, Queen Be Luscious and Mistress Formika

particularities

Formally, the film Venus Boyz is a mixture between documentary and feature film . It was staged with the participating performers based on years of research and a script close to reality. During the filming, two cameras were used to film from different perspectives: a main camera and an experimental camera.

As Gabriel Baur explains in an interview with Irene Genhart, “Documentary film […] is always also a staging, a selected form of representation of reality. In 'Venus Boyz' the moment of staging is intensified: the performances, that is, the representations of the protagonists on stage, are interwoven with their conscious and unconscious representations in everyday life. The permanent staging of ourselves enables us to perceive that there are only gradual differences between the staging of gender in everyday life and on stage. "

According to Baur, this staging affects everyone. In her opinion, the division of the sexes has become so natural for people that they hardly think about it anymore. She believes people grow into these roles and stage their gender every day without being aware of it. In the interview with Genhart, she refers to Ru Paul when she says: "Every morning when we get up, we put on drag."

For Baur, the important thing about Venus Boyz is that the protagonists are very open emotionally, which also ensures particularly touching moments. As she explains, she thinks the moments are particularly touching “because in them our ideas of fiction and reality, of imagination and convention, of man and woman dissolve. There is space for something new, still undefined. 'Venus Boyz' tries to match this moment of the staging through its form. "

Baur filmed with two cameras the whole time: A main camera, with Sophie Maintigneux as camerawoman, who was in turn accompanied by a small camera that filmed the same scenes from a different perspective. Baur experimented with different recording speeds and lighting.

Baur: “I aimed at the dissolution of 'reality', wanted to create a non-defined visual zone. The two levels were mixed up during assembly. In addition, there are black and white pictures that were taken during the research - and the blue pictures. The blue pictures are 'reality in drag' for me: for me they are a third, not colored or black and white, not 24 pictures or 3 pictures per second, they mark short moments from a world of dreams, of imagination. Like the experimental images, they create distance and refer to the construction of film reality. Film is always 'reality in drag'. "

Production and release

The production and realization of Venus Boyz took over five years. The premiere was at the Locarno International Film Festival , the international premiere in 2002 at the Berlin / Panorama International Film Festival . Venus Boyz has been shown at over 50 film festivals worldwide, including a .:

Theatrical release in eight European countries and in the USA. International DVD releases and TV sales.

Awards

reception

Ronnie Scheib wrote in Variety : “A beautifully crafted exploration of the world of drag kings! (...) Gabriel Baur's quietly resplendent docu is as carefully composed and structured as the manufactured masculine personae of the women she's filming. "

Bonus material DVD

The original DVD (Europe / USA) contains additional bonus material: the short films “Venus Boyz around the world” and “Gendervocabulary”, plus an interview with the director.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans Scheirl
  2. ↑ DRED ( Memento of February 8, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ^ Bridge Markland
  4. ↑ Shelly Mars
  5. ↑ Conversation with Gabriel Baur , Irene Genhart in conversation with Gabriel Baur
  6. ↑ Ronnie Scheib: Venus Boyz. In: Variety. June 19, 2002, accessed February 8, 2020 .