Queens of Heart

Portland State professor Jan Haaken will be debuting her feature-length documentary on Darcelle XV Showplace, the oldest female impersonation club in the country, next week at the LA Femme Film Festival held in Los Angeles.

Queens of Heart: Community Therapists in Drag is about drag performances at the four-decade old club, commonly referred to as Darcelle’s, and the sort of therapy such performers sometimes provide to the audience.

Haaken noticed that many nervous males, people attending bachelorette parties and people recovering from emotional issues went to the club.

She made it her goal to understand why.

Haaken said she found that Darcelle, the 75-year-old performer and namesake of the club, often comforted the crowd, leading them into the world of female impersonation with ease. Other performers did as well, she said.

Hundreds of hours of footage were shot for the documentary and finally assembled in a non-traditional way. Each interview was assigned a category based on psychological themes.

During the editing process, Haaken said that she and her crew were able to create a story by analyzing what categories came up most often.

Haaken spent the last five years directing and editing Queens of Heart, and is now looking to have the film distributed.

The full-length film transformed from a graduate student project that Haaken and a few of her students undertook years ago.

Graduate student Heather Mosher worked on the original class project and later became director of photography for the full-length version. Most of the film crew was female, which is unusual, according to Haaken.

Queens of Heart has been shown in varying stages at colleges in London, New York City and Los Angeles. However, apart from local screenings, it has never played outside Oregon in a non-academic setting.

Next week, it will screen in the primetime slot at the LA Femme Film Festival, a festival that provides a platform for women filmmakers.

“A lot of people contributed to this and we were able to complete a film that is now getting recognized,” Haaken said.

After a first career as a psychiatrist nurse, Haaken came to Portland State in 1980. She said she has always been multidisciplinary in her studies, but filmmaking was a medium she did not discover until later in life.

Growing up, Haaken’s parents did not allow her to watch movies. They believed in the strong psychological power of moving images, an idea that she said she agrees with, Haaken said.

Haaken uses that power to her advantage in her filmmaking, she said. Film, to Haaken, “lends itself to a lot of discussion.”

In the 74-minute film, Haaken analyzes many different psychological concepts in a common language that audiences can understand. Instead of making a purely educational film, she said she wanted to make something that could play for standard audiences–on public broadcasting or in a theatrical release.

Queens of Heart has the power to confront viewers’ morals and ideas about sexuality and gender identity, and to challenge stereotypes, Haaken said. Watching the documentary with audiences makes her nervous, but Haaken is still looking forward to traveling to Los Angeles for the film festival next week.

How the film will be received at the Los Angeles film festival is unknown, but Haaken said she is excited to promote Portland and Portland State. Some festival employees who have seen the film have already mentioned to Haaken that they want to visit Portland and watch a show at Darcelle’s, she said.

After the film plays in Los Angeles, Haaken said she will be submitting it to other film festivals around the world. It has already been submitted to public broadcasting and a gay and lesbian film festival put on by the British Film Institute.

Making a film is like raising a child, Haaken said. You can prepare it for the world for a long time, but eventually you have to let it go out on its own. Queens of Heart is at that place, she said.

“It will have to make its own way,” Haaken said.

Darcelle XV Showplace208 N.W. Third Ave.Portland, OR 97209