Lukas Merl
1360189
Movie: Paperdolls
This is a film about the lives from transgender migrant workers from the Philippines,
who work as health care workers for elderly Jewish Man. And these Philippines workers
perform as a Band during their spare time and how they deal with their transgender life
and their social problems in a conservative land like Israel. How they have to deal with
the harsh working conditions, with the street criminals, the fear of terrorists bombing
and of the fear for deportation.
In the movie there are 5 Filipinos who all work at the social care sector. In Israel this is a
common fact that people hire foreign workers and pay them to work for them, but it’s
declared that these people are only allowed to stay in the land as long as they work for
their clients, if they loose their job their status is changed into illegal and they get hunted
by the police and send back to their home country.
In the film we got a group of transgender people who just wanted to be accepted for
what they are, some of them show their sexual orientation very public and to their
employers the others have to hide it because they are afraid they will loose their job and
have to leave the country.
These people created a group called the paper dolls, so they dress as women and
perform as queens. They go on stage with their female clothing and they want to get
accepted and want to perform with their music acts, for freedom and peace. They got
several acts during the film and when they got a gig in a big club, they first were very
excited and happy about it. But when they got in the club, they had to dress in Japanese
outfit and had to greet everybody who enters the club and had to bow in front of
everybody who got in the club.
For me that showed me where these people with their special sexual orientation and
their special needs for wanting to a be women in men’s body where they stand in the
society. They are not really accepted they are a just needed for work which the people
in their country don’t want to do by their self.
This is a very good film because it shows how people who don’t follow the rules from the
society are treated. In the film there is also one scene where one of the group got fired
and was departed by the police to their home country.
At the end of the film the paper dolls were on several places all over the world, some
stayed in Israel , a few went to the U.K . The members of the paper dolls split up but still
will never forget or regret the time they spend with the paper dolls in Tel Avivv.