Mayami: Between Cut and Action is one of the most talked-about movies released in 1986, attracting audiences with its cinematic storytelling and memorable performances.
Artifice and reality, identity and disguise, representation and transformation are woven through a powerful pastiche of theatrical performance, mass cultural appropriation and fragmented narrative. Deconstructing an episode of TV's Miami Vice that features crude representations of Latino drug dealers, Labat constructs a multilayered psychological drama of converging realities. In a studio (the space between "cut" and "action"), artists Tony Oursler and Winston Tong provide commentary. Playing out a tragic drama with dolls, Tong also tapes his eyelids down and applies make-up, transforming himself from Asian to Caucasian, male to female. In a final confrontation of identity, Tong steps through the enlarged television image, devoid of masks or make-up.
