Margo and Candy - She-Male Encounters (1980)

Описание: Directed by Kim Christy.

Although the term female impersonator was eventually superseded by terms like drag queen and trans*, the stories of our fore-mothers in the female-impersonator scene are remarkable in their own right and record a peculiar mode of gender fluidity. All in the same year, a female impersonator might be billed as a man while performing in drag a straight night club, pass as a cis woman while working at a carnival, pass as a cis man while working as a hair dresser, and work as a transsexual pr05titute to make a living.
For more about the lives of female impersonators, see Kate Marlowe's "Mr. Madam" (1964), Esther Newton's "Mother Camp" (1968), and Minette's "Recollections of a Part-Time Lady" (1979).

Kim Christy began her career in the 1960s as a female impersonator. After performing in nightclubs, posing for photographs, and writing for magazines for many years, Christy achieved a more prominent position as the editor of Female Mimics magazine, and went on to produce and direct of some of the first p*rng4ph1c movies to center transsexual performers.

Was Kim Christy the first trans* movie director? Personally, I think it is better to discuss her movies in the context of her career as a female impersonator, because Christy has never identified herself as being trans.

This is the first scene in Christy's second movie, "She-Male Encounters 1". The scene features two transsexual actresses, Carnal Candy and Magnificent Margo, as they dish about their careers, their s3x-lives, and the exploits of their transsexual friend Sulka. This conversation frames the entire movie. In turns, the womens' voices segue into voice-overs that foreground the movie's various hard-c0re scenes. The hard-c0re scenes begin and end with a cross-fade that leads us back to the scene of Candy and Margot chatting on the couch. To me, this is a distinctly trans-feminist gesture.

At the very beginning of the the movie, Candy browses Margo's magazine (Magnificent Margo Vol. 4 No. 4, Satellite Enterprises, 1979) while she waits for Margo to arrive. In this way, Kim Christy figures trans women as the viewers and interlocutors of her trans p*rn0graphy.