FACE Foundation

- Supporting French-American Cultural Exchange in Education and the Arts

Cassandro, the Exotico!
Cassandro, the Exotico!

For close to twenty years, filmmaker Marie Losier has been making singular portraits of the artists and originals of her era, filming the everyday lives of legends like Tony Conrad or Genesis P-Orridge and augmenting them with her vision of their dreams and fantasy lives. With Cassandro, the Exotico!, she turns her inimitable gaze upon Saúl Armendáriz, better known as Cassandro, a legend of lucha libre, the wildly popular form of Mexican wrestling. Cassandro is a leading exotico, a wrestler who appears in drag but is every bit as formidable as his macho opponents. Unlike most exoticos, Cassandro is openly gay and an outspoken champion of the marginalized. While the film catches Cassandro as he makes the difficult decision to retire and nearly loses his hard-won sobriety, it avoids sensationalism through the obvious bond between filmmaker and subject. With her off-screen laugh and the handcrafted feel of her 16 mm images creating an intimate environment, Losier invites Cassandro to open up, capturing the traces of the painful history that have made him such an emblem of resilience, from the literal battle scars that dot his body to the evidence of the psychic damage of a life lived against the grain.

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Credits

DIRECTOR
Marie Losier

SCREENPLAY
Marie Losier
Antoine Barraud

CAST
Cassandro

Overview

DETAILS
Documentary
English, Spanish
73 min.
France, 2019

DISTRIBUTOR
Film Movement

PRICE RANGE
$350-$450

AVAILABLE ON
Amazon, FandangoNow, AppleTV, Vudu, Hoopla, Tubi

VIRTUAL SCREENING PLATFORM
Time-limited password-protected Vimeo links, and agreed audience capacity

Image Gallery