Queer Gender Performativity in Documentary Cinema: The Transgender Look of Italian Filmmaker Simone Cangelosi

Abstract

This article analyses the ways in which Italian filmmaker Simone Cangelosi enacts a queer countervisuality in his documentary films Dalla testa ai piedi (2007) and Una nobile rivoluzione (2014). The theoretical framework traces a genealogy from what has been termed as fe/male gazes up to what can be understood as transgender, queer and feminist gazes. Connections between the performative mode of representation, performative documentary cinema and gender performativity are also established. By means of a close reading of both films and an interview with the filmmaker, this paper argues that queer ways of seeing in documentary cinema cannot only depict existing realities but also put forward other ways of being, becoming and collectively enacting the right to appear.