After his American lover leaves, Paul, an attractive teenager, leaves his home region and heads to Manila to earn a living for his family. Noel, a popular male escort, takes him under his wing and introduces him to the world of male striptease, where prostitution, drugs and police corruption go hand in hand.
Macho Dancer, released in 1988, shortly after the fall of the Marcos dictatorship, is regarded as one of Lino Brocka’s most daring and controversial feature films. The filmmaker offers a dual perspective by filming long scenes of male striptease with a self-assured sensuality, whilst at the same time methodically unravelling the eroticism of these images and the – particularly colonial – mechanisms that produce them.
With Macho Dancer, Lino Brocka – himself openly gay in a conservative society – delivers a raw testimony, far removed from any sense of self-pity. A milestone in Asian queer cinema.
