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It is a 90-minutes documentale, a hybrid of documentary and fiction. It follows the life of 33-year-old Moroccan-German Mourad, who is ‘the smallest drag queen of the world’ and multi-disabled, and 48-year-old Dutch Antoine, who is a nightclub performer as well. Mourad experiments with his disabilities and is not in the closet like most of disabled people, but on stage of Parties on Ibiza amongst the most beautifully built go-go dancers. This is because schizophrenic Antoine, academic educated artist, discovered Mourads skills for being a performer. This movie is part documentary and the other part is fairy tale, arty, Camp-Style fiction, connected to what they talk about, think and dream about. Very visual, very fancy as well as experimental, but always entertaining and burlesque. (Imdb)
This 90-minutes long documen-tale tells a true story about a most unique friendship, about survival at the edge of society and about the final triumph over mishaps and obstacles that seemed to have one marked for a life in the shadows.
It follows a portion of the lives of 33-year-old Maroccaine-German Mourad and 48-year-old Dutch Antoine, two drag-performers, better known as CYBERSISSY and BAYBJANE, two otherworldly spirits, who light up the stages of the international party-circuit with their boundless creativity and their well calculated freakish-ness.
Mourad is, at the height of 149 cm, “the smallest drag queen of the world”. Multi-disabled since birth, he has spent half his life in hospitals and homes for the handicapped. His legs are of different length, he has no regular toes, no regular fingers and just one eye. And yet he has managed to overcome the limitations of his disabilities and to transform himself into a performer who shares the stage of Matinée Group parties on Ibiza with perfectly built go-go dancers and shines even brighter than them.
All of this is, because Antoine, academic educated artist, and burdened with a disturbing family history and serious psychic problems of his own, discovered Mourad and his skills for being a performer and helped him developing the stage-persona BayBjane to match his own alter ego Cybersissy, making him the perfect counterpart for their successful club-performances.
In a colorful blend of documentary “behind the scenes” episodes from clubs around the world, private video-material, probing interviews, that reveal the inner life of our protagonists, as well as artfully staged fantasy-sequences of lush opulence, the movie celebrates the unique friendship and restless life-style of these two unlikely heroes and shows the triumph of individuality and creativity over the parts that society expects us to play.
The highly emotional music of Gustav Mahler as well as contemporary club-sounds and contributions from many other musicians weave the multi-colored carpet on which this feast for the senses is unleashed. (Production)
NOTE DI REGIA
Antoine and Mourad do exactly that… That’s why it was love at first sight, when I first saw them powering up the Cologne nightlife many years ago. I was thinking: “Oops! Is Leigh Bowery still alive?” I had visited Leigh, the iconic London clublife star of the late 80’s and early 90’s, in his apartment on the seventh floor of a London high-rise where I shot a tv-documentary about his living sculptures. That was in the mid-90s. Unfortunately he died shortly after that.
To me Antoine aka “Cybersissy” seemed like the reborn Leigh Bowery. Antoine was a true icon of Cologne’s nightlife and it is about time for him to gain fame in the same line as Leigh Bowery did.
I was intrigued by Cybersissy’s performances, he was buzzing in the back of my head. But only about two years ago I got in touch with Antoine, visiting him in Tilburg, his hometown in South Holland. Soon I was able to convince him of the idea of creating a movie-portrait of him. Once I had gained Mourad’s trust as well, I was happy and started working on the film. That was in March 2012.
Mourad is a very unusual phenomenon. So it is no wonder, that the tabloid press approached him on several occasions, but he refused to have his story exploited in freak-show-style. Instead he decided to confide to me. As he told me, it were my television documentaries on Leigh Bowery, Gilbert and George and on androgyny – in particular about Orlan, a French artist who got plastic surgery in front of cameras and transformed to unnatural shapes-that convinced him to collaborate with me.
Now began a wonderful time of trust. With my camera I followed the two, who I like to call “my Cyberstars” to the international locations of their performances. It rarely felt like work, as we had so much fun and love the party life.
The three of us made a good team. And we still do. A team, that was joined by our highly motivated friends and colleagues of the crew and everybody else, who participated, to make this film happen.
The three of us, we are on the same page. This is based on the desire for transformation and self-determination. We know that we have much more possibilities than playing a given role dictated by society! We want to develop and grow beyond ourselves, to mythical creatures, as well as in always new self-inventions. Not predictable, not simple, but always surprising.
That’s what our heroes do with each new day. And Antoine and Mourad are my heroes. Why this is, should tell our movie… (Tim Lienhard )
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