Artist in Person Dressing for success has its cross-gender incentives. In Jeremy Marre's enticing Ladyboys (52 mins), two Thai boys, aged sixteen and seventeen, don feminine dress as a way out of rural poverty. But it's not quite that simple: these young katoi (transvestites) revel in their femininity as a sign of difference, of admission into the secrets of gender. Highly publicized drag beauty contests attract cross-dressers from throughout Thailand. Director Marre follows his teen hopefuls as they glide down the runways, their (fe)male forms animated by dreams of prosperity. For the successful, these pageants lead straight to the glitzy cabarets in the southern town of Pattaya. Ladyboys describes a complex world in which definitions of gender are inseparable from the economics of exploitation. Once esteemed figures in classical Thai dance, the katoi have now been reduced to workers in a pseudo-glamorous sex industry. This insightful documentary shows that clothes can make the man, or be his undoing. Shown with John Goss's Bangkok (Fighting AIDS) (USA, 1991, 6 mins), in which the White Line Dance Troupe combines traditional dance with AIDS information, creating a unique form of cultural activism. -Steve Seid Thai snacks provided by Seth Jacobson of the Thai Kitchen.