Macho Dancer

Queer International. 4K Restoration!

Heavily censored upon release in director Lino Brocka’s native Philippines but hugely successful overseas, Macho Dancer blends a flair for socially conscious melodrama with niche erotic pulp provocation. Upon losing a reliable American client, 18-year-old gigolo Pol leaves his native province to try his luck in the soapy gay clubs of Manila, where he discovers more than his young mind bargains for: an underbelly of protection rackets, human trafficking, and teeming political corruption. Beneath the film’s astutely cynical look on systemic, class exploitation in the Philippines is a neon-lit tale of sexual self-discovery gyrating between queer desire and heteronormative strictures, sensuality and grit, tenderness and violence.

The Union Cinema is on the second floor of the UW-Milwaukee Student Union building.