Pineapples & Pasties: A Burlesque Documentary

Lymari Graciano is an American Filmmaker. She is known for directing the nationally broadcast television show, Hawaii Entertainment News, Shero – Transgender Superhero, and Take Back The Night. She has also worked on Jumanji, Jurassic World and Hawaii Five-0 as well as in theatre on The Legend of Georgia McBride, For Colored girls and The Colored Museum. Ever since she was a young girl, she was disturbed by the inequality she experienced and has dedicated her life towards challenging racial and gender stereotypes. Her career behind the camera began when her parents gifted her a 35mm camera. Spending most of her time in the darkroom she began to see photography as a creative outlet for expressing why the future should be female. She studied gender and economics at Harvard University while exploring her love of acting. She took on theatre roles and small roles in film and television when it hit her: No one except the Actor and the Director cared about what the character is feeling right at that moment the director says action. All of the crew and background actors are excruciatingly silent right at that crucial moment when the character is supposed to be emoting feeling. Knowing her skin color and gender was preventing her from getting the complex acting roles she knew she could and deserved to do, she decided to pursue directing. She graduated from the University of Hawaii, Academy for Creative Media with the skills needed to tell stories with film. Her Directorial thesis film, Shero – The Transgender Superhero, combined all of her grievances of her gendered experiences with humor and revenge as the main character saves the day as they always should in Superhero films. She didn’t have a Superhero to save her in real life, so she became her own. Her debut feature film Pineapples & Pasties: A Burlesque Documentary was completed on October 29, 2020.