Getting ready to put on a show
Filmed over six years in the clubs and on the streets of East London, Colin Rothbart's Dressed as A Girl mingles glamour and high drama with much more personal perspectives on showbusiness. As it comes to DVD, we ask the director how he came to take on this notoriously challenging subject and how the film developed as it did.
"I was friendly with one of them, Holestar, before," says Colin, who has spent many years socialising in the East End. "She was performing on the alternative drag scene in East London. We went on holiday together and she said ‘Have you seen Paris Is Burning?’ She said ‘You know, there’s never really been a good film about the British drag scene.’ I agreed and she said ‘Come to Glastonbury,” where she was going to an event called NYC Downlow. I met...
Filmed over six years in the clubs and on the streets of East London, Colin Rothbart's Dressed as A Girl mingles glamour and high drama with much more personal perspectives on showbusiness. As it comes to DVD, we ask the director how he came to take on this notoriously challenging subject and how the film developed as it did.
"I was friendly with one of them, Holestar, before," says Colin, who has spent many years socialising in the East End. "She was performing on the alternative drag scene in East London. We went on holiday together and she said ‘Have you seen Paris Is Burning?’ She said ‘You know, there’s never really been a good film about the British drag scene.’ I agreed and she said ‘Come to Glastonbury,” where she was going to an event called NYC Downlow. I met...
- 12/8/2015
- by Jennie Kermode
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
London is burning, and this documentary captures its varied and flourishing drag community with inclusivity and affection
Colin Rothbart’s dispatch from London’s flourishing drag community initially threatens to be all tits and teeth: a whirlwind tour of a scene that needs scant encouragement to pop on a frock and extensively self-document. Once the film-maker returns to his subjects off-hours, however, he identifies as much subtle and cherishable variation as there is among birds of paradise. There’s Scottee, for whom drag is a confessional, often confrontational form of performance art, and Amber (formerly Dean), whose transition – and subsequent reunion with her bluff Mancunian father – forms the most compelling throughline. Rothbart’s inclusive approach also finds room for the enigmatic Pia, a third-gender conspiracy theorist whose Facebook updates are, as you might imagine, something else entirely. The survey extends not far beyond a few Dalston sidestreets, but the footage Rothbart returns,...
Colin Rothbart’s dispatch from London’s flourishing drag community initially threatens to be all tits and teeth: a whirlwind tour of a scene that needs scant encouragement to pop on a frock and extensively self-document. Once the film-maker returns to his subjects off-hours, however, he identifies as much subtle and cherishable variation as there is among birds of paradise. There’s Scottee, for whom drag is a confessional, often confrontational form of performance art, and Amber (formerly Dean), whose transition – and subsequent reunion with her bluff Mancunian father – forms the most compelling throughline. Rothbart’s inclusive approach also finds room for the enigmatic Pia, a third-gender conspiracy theorist whose Facebook updates are, as you might imagine, something else entirely. The survey extends not far beyond a few Dalston sidestreets, but the footage Rothbart returns,...
- 10/1/2015
- by Mike McCahill
- The Guardian - Film News
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