Red Vaughan Tremmel and Gwen Lis. They are independent documentary filmmakers whose current project, "Gurlesque Burlesque," examines the history and revival of burlesque in the United States since 1860. To raise funds for this film, they produce burlesque shows in Chicago . These shows took on a life of their own with shows selling out at 1000 attendees.

Red Vaughan Tremmel
is a Ph.D. candidate in American History at the University of Chicago. Red's research focuses on the culture of postwar leisure economies to better understand how people in the postwar U.S. used public spaces, particularly nighttime markets, to shift how they felt in the world.

Red has taught courses in nineteenth- and twentieth-century United States history,the history of sexual subcultures, and radical feminist, psychoanalytic,poststructural, postcolonial, and queer theories. As a past staff member of the Gay and Lesbian Studies Project at the U of C, Red co-organized a history of sexuality conference, The Future of the Queer Past, which brought together over 600 scholars from a dozen countries.

Gwen Lis-
Producer/Documentary Maker/Stage Giver/Shooter/Editor
Gwen Lis was lucky enough to graduate from Sarah Lawrence College in 1995. She spent the next few years in NYC where she taught photography at Hetrick Martin High School for gay, lesbian and transgendered youth worked in the music video industry. This inspired Gwen with the possibility and power of giving people new technologies to tell truths about themselves and their world. Through film and video, Gwen aims to take up more public space with the real issues that occupy people’s lives. She left her commercial editing job in SoHo and came to Chicago where The Sissy Butch Brothers began their project five years ago. Dedicated to making issues of gender, sex, feminism and community hot, Gwen is armed with a camera and sometimes, a stage.

"Stare. It's the way to educate your eyes. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long". -Walker Evans

Gwen has made a life around "getting it on tape," and asking people to see.

Fellow filmmakers include:

 MJ Rizk

 Courtney Hermann

 Ronit Bezalel

 Carolyn Ciazzi

 Lisa Samra