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| FI Film Fest's 2nd Week Focuses on Endearing Portraits of Female Impersonators |
by Bruce-Michael Gelbert
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photo provided by
FI Film Festival |
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| Pageant |
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Featured at the Fire Island Film & Video Festival, at Cherry Grove's Community House, on August 7, were films, full-length and short, which limn endearing portraits of the professional female impersonators that are their subjects. The feature film was Ron Davis and Stewart Halpern's "Pageant" (USA, 2008, 95 minutes) and the short was Joe Jeffreys' "Dorian: a picture" (USA, 2008, 6 minutes) and Davis, from Fire Island Pines, and Jeffreys were present to answer questions about their films.
"Pageant" focuses on five of the 50 contestants in the 2006, 34th annual Miss Gay America contest, at the Cannon Center for the Performing Arts in Memphis, Tennessee, painting such full and likeable portraits of them that we root for each of them as they discuss their aspirations and compete in the contest. The contenders have already won regional or state competitions and come from, among other places, Tennessee, Florida, and California. We see contestants Victoria DePaula (Carl), Victoria Parker AKA Pork Chop (Victor), Chantel Reshae (Robert), Coti Collins (David), and Alina Maletti (Tony), out of drag, at their homes; meet their supportive families, dressers and backup performers; and watch them rehearse and perform their numbers for the talent competition and face interviews, in male clothes, with the five judges. We rejoice as most make it into the top 10 finalists.
We see Victoria DePaula perform "Sisters," in the solo talent competition, with a life-sized puppet as her Siamese twin. We hear chubby Pork Chop, whose idol is Miss Piggy, express pride in her real cleavage, courtesy, she tells us, of Burger King and McDonald's, and see her, as finalist, offer an emotional "And I Am Telling You I Am Not Going," which helps her place as second runner-up. In the business 20 years, Coti Collins, who 'does' Reba McIntyre, talks of Reba coming to see her perform and hiring her to impersonate the star in her own show. Coti does Judy Garland in the final competition, in which she is named first runner-up. There is a fascinating interview with Jake, Chantel Reshae's very supportive, heterosexual dance partner.
We meet the owners of the pageant, who speak of the "excellence" and "the epitome of glamour" that Miss Gay America must embody. We also briefly encounter Nicole Dubois, a former Jimmy Swaggart Ministries Family Worship Center choir singer and Hurricane Katrina evacuee, who says Katrina taught her humility, and hear her sing "Home," from "The Wiz," in her own voice and inherit the crown from Raquel Chevallier. "Pageant" won the Audience Award for Best Documentary at the San Francisco International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival and Best Feature at Newfest, in New York City, in June.
Jeffreys' film concerns Rick Colantino, who performed as Dorian Wing at New York's Club 82 and Jewel Box in the 1950s and '60s, and see footage from her film "She-Man," which begins with a doctor's very period apologia-"The people you are about to see may shock you, may frighten you"-and from her home movies.
In short, these are excellent films, easy to recommend highly.
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