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Venus Boyz

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Switzerland, United States, Germany · 2002
1h 42m
Director Gabrielle Baur
Starring Diane Torr, Dréd Gerestant, Del La Grace Volcano, Queen Bee Luscious
Genre Documentary

A film journey through a universe of female masculinity. A legendary Drag King Night in New York is the point of departure for an odyssey to transgendered worlds, where women become men - some for a night, others for their whole lives. What motivates them? What changes take place? What do they dream of? The drag kings of New York meet in clubs and change lustfully into their male alter egos, parodying them and exploring male eroticism and power strategies. In London we see women experiment with hormones to become new men and 'cyborgs'. Masculinity and transformation as performance, subversion or existential necessity.

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What are critics saying?

70

Village Voice by

Baur's doc earnestly -- if not altogether adroitly -- examines masculinity as a performance, demonstrating that biology is not destiny.

60

The New York Times by Dave Kehr

She (Baur) has clearly earned the trust and respect of her subjects, the first qualification for any responsible documentarist, and they have repaid her with an intimate glimpse into their singular lives.

30

L.A. Weekly by Ernest Hardy

Empty details pile up, awful performance art is doled out, talking heads are intermittently identified, and the late Brandon Teena is evoked to little real purpose.

60

TV Guide Magazine by Ken Fox

This provocative, at times languid, documentary from German experimental filmmaker Gabriel Baur is something of travelogue through this unexplored frontier, a mixed-up, shook-up borderland where nothing, especially not an individual's gender, should be ever be taken for granted.

60

Los Angeles Times by Kevin Thomas

It is clear that these individuals have exercised considerable courage and determination to sort out their sexual natures and to be true to them. They have the sturdy sense of human survivors, and in Venus Boyz Baur regards them with compassion and dignity.

38

New York Post by Lou Lumenick

It's not uninteresting, but so much footage is given over to earnest discussion of sexual politics that the overall effect is like sitting through a semester's worth of transgender studies.

30

The A.V. Club by Noel Murray

Becomes hard going the longer Baur stretches out the parade of narcissists, all spouting received wisdom, cultural clichés, and bad poetry.

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