Thank you to writer/director Deborah Rowe and actress/co-producer/director/videographer Kristy Van Meter for this film and for interviewing with Liquid Radio Live on BlogTalkRadio.com. This is a must see film!! Be prepared to view fully-nude moving portraits of lovely and engaging women in "Portraits of a Naked Lady Dancer" winner of the Grand Jury Prize as part of The New York International Independent Film and Video Festival in Las Vegas. Visually stunning and uplifting, this documentary features the private lives, thoughts, and opinions of Washington, DC's most notorious exotic dancers.
"Portraits" is a documentary produced, directed, and edited by Deborah Rowe with Kristy Van Meter, a featured dancer. The movie unfolds quickly as each dancer, one by one, draws you into her world. However, one can't help but be both humored and shaken by the very humanness of these beauties. Blending into society and family outside of dancing presents an existential challenge. As the dancers struggle between pride and shame, the power they feel on stage is juxtaposed against the powerlessness they encounter within themselves to overcome their own demons, and the truisms that belie a lifestyle that both celebrates and condemns the female stripper.
Be sure to check out these links:
To purchase film use link to the right in the column.
http://www.kristyvanmeter.com/index.html
You can contact Deborah Rowe at:
crewfem@msn.com
or Kristy Van Meter at:
msvanmeter@hotmail.com
Rowe had just returned from Mexico to research and film another documentary about the Women of the Isthmus, the only known community enclave that nurtures and supports a matriarchal society in which women lead as head of the family, business, and politics, and men serve to support these roles. "One travels through town, and eats at restaurants, which display countless artistic images expressing reverence and awe to the beauty and power of women's spiritual, sexual, and reproductive powers. Women and men partner together in all aspects of community life with women taking a leading role in constructing the moral fabric of the community and keeping the peace. Crime is almost unheard of and unlike most of Mexico's machismo society, gay men and women are far more accepted into the community and celebrated as an integral part of society."
"In 'Portraits', I wanted to show how that same type of feminine power and energy is expressed in a more primitive, albeit controlled environment. The dark club atmosphere punctuated by the bright lights and the nude entertainment create a pheromone inferno, where men go to pay homage to female beauty while having the chance to be in the midst of it, its smells, and to enjoy the hypnotic effect ideal beauty and sexuality have on the senses."
Rowe and Van Meter met in 1997 while stripping to raise money to make "Zealots From Hell", a mockumentary about the notorious Promise Keepers who rallied in the Nation's Capital in 1997. "We wanted to reveal their sexist attitudes toward women and reveal how zealotry for or against anything can make a person look pretty ridiculous. We even turned the cameras on ourselves as filmmakers, and by the end appeared just as reprehensible as the Promise Keepers themselves." The movie won an honorable mention at DC's Rosebud Film Festival.
While moonlighting as a stripper, Rowe became intrigued by the sub-cultural world of strippers in Washington, DC's finest strip clubs. "Kris and I worked together as strippers. I thought she was really smart and we began to collaborate. I asked her to be one of the featured dancers in the documentary. After balking a couple of times, she finally agreed, but soon wanted to also be integrally involved in the whole post-production process. She had some great ideas and that was how Queen Bee DV Productions, LLC was born.
Rowe struggled to complete the documentary when her own family disowned her for challenging the family's traditional conservative Republican views. "They were outraged when they discovered I was both stripping and making a movie about strippers. We didn't speak for years," Rowe confides. "It tore my heart out. I was devastated. However, I couldn't shake the burning need to complete the movie. I suffered panic attacks for two years, and then one day I just let go. From that point on the movie just created itself."
Five years later, Rowe and Van Meter catch up with the movie's heroines to discover a new edge and a different kind of woman and to finally complete "Portraits of a Naked Lady Dancer".
Come see "Portraits of a Naked Lady Dancer". Raw, fresh and intelligent, the producers of this docu-art get at a little something more when uncovering these ladies. Enter the world and the minds of Jessica, Zoe, April and Ginger and let the layers unfold to reveal a deeper understanding of the realities of being a dancer in light of the current more negative stereotypes.
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