While in Russia, during the first FrameWork workshop, I had a dream. I woke up in the middle of the night to jot it down on a notebook; I always do that, I have a Jungian therapist. The following day when I returned to the second script discussion with Franz Rodenkirchen, it felt like a cinematographic therapy session. In my dream, I had inherited the body of a transvestite to direct my film. To inherit this body meant to wear it, experience it, feel it under my skin, make gestures and walk with it; it meant to understand why I always throw my hands up in the air like Carmen Miranda and why my shoes need to be sturdy. At the end of the day I looked for the transvestite so I could give her back the body, completely worn out. She had left me a note: “My dear, now it’s definitely yours.”
Lily and the Dragonflies is an immersion into the underworld of transvestites in downtown São Paulo, a world made up of fables and urban tales. It is where ghouls and ghosts with no official identity reside; most of their bodies are given pauper’s burials; most often than not, their unsolved murders turn into statistics for they are seldom investigated because, as the cops say, “each corpse gives out its own stink”. The stories of the downtown transvestites are basically orally transmitted. Their memories live on in the tales passed on by the survivors, embellished with tragic, fantastical undertones, sometimes to serve as a warning to the younger ones and to remind them of the path of those who fell into this life, like Alice fell into the hole in the search for the White Rabbit. These are my heroines, those who reinvented themselves, building up a kind of armour that allows them to survive in this world without becoming anonymous victims.
Lily and the Dragonflies is a story about the love of a woman for a transvestite, a story that follows the deconstruction of a suit of armour and the construction of a new one. Miranda, the transvestite, must face everything and everyone so that she can be close to the man she loves, even at the cost of her own life. And Lily, who needs to reinvent herself, creates a suit of armour so she can set out on her journey out into the world in the search for Miranda.
To shoot a transvestite is to capture two presences in one body and that alone is a nature’s event. Formality may help me balance such a strong image, for we will be working with transsexual actresses. They always say with irony and humour: “If you’re working with transvestites, work with us, it will be cheaper because the special effects are already built-in”. The journey of Lily and the Dragonflies is full of little details and great learning experiences.