5 New Yorkers  - 5 Years - 14 Hairstyles
  About the Film

'do is a documentary about people and their hair, from mousse to gel, from the perm to the buzz. It's about your favorite product, the worst cut you've ever had, and how much time, effort and cash a person will spend to create a look.

But what does that look mean? What assumptions do we make when we meet a black man with a shaved head and two earrings, or a white man with a mullet? What is a woman with her dark hair cut short like a boy trying to tell us about what she does for a living or what she considers attractive verses one who wears her blond hair in long, unruly curls?

Hair is the lens 'do uses to look more closely at the complex relationship between appearance and identity. Following a diverse group of five New Yorkers through five years and fourteen hairstyles, the film looks at how the changes they go through on the outside reflect inner transformations and choices about who they would like to be.

 

Teresa
For Teresa, the daughter of a Vietnamese woman and a black GI adopted into a white family, the decision about whether to straighten her hair or "let it do its own thing" is fraught with concerns about where she fits in and how she wants to be perceived.

 

Joannie

Joannie
uses different hair products and styles as a way of trying out different identities, finally deciding to "chop it off" when she comes out as a lesbian to her traditional Chinese family.

 

Kirby

Kirby
says he shaves his head "for the look," but the process of "keeping it clean" has also become part of his recovery from drug addiction.

  Doug

As an out gay man who doesn't have the perfect body, Doug uses his hair to make himself "feel a little more interesting" - until he realizes that that might get in the way of his moving up the corporate ladder.
  Peggy

Peggy
struggles to reconcile the conflict she has always felt between being feminine and feeling empowered, gradually learning to take an interest in her appearance as part of taking an interest in herself.
 
Through these personal stories, 'do explores issues of race, gender, sexual preference and socio-economic status, encouraging the audience to examine their own ideas about how we define ourselves - as feminine or masculine, banker or artist, gay or straight, black or white - through how we look.