North by Current

Synopsis

North by Current is a visual rumination on the understated relationships between mothers and children, truths and myths, losses and gains. After the inconclusive death of his young niece, filmmaker Angelo Madsen Minax returns to his rural Michigan hometown determined to make a film about the family's wrongful persecution. Instead, he pivots to excavate the depths of generational addiction, Christian fervor, and trans embodiment. Like the relentless Michigan seasons, the meaning of family shifts, as Madsen, his sister, and his parents strive tirelessly to accept each other.

Bio/Filmo

Angelo Madsen Minax (Michigan, 1983) is an artist and filmmaker whose projects explore queer and trans intimacies, chosen and biological kinships and cosmic, natural and technological phenomena, often drawing on autoethnography. After graduating from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2005, he played in several bands and shot the critically acclaimed documentary Riot Acts: Flaunting Gender Deviance in Music Performance, featuring 21 transgender musicians, on tour in 2010; it went on to pick up dozens of awards at LGTBI and music film festivals worldwide. He combines his art projects with documentary filmmaking, teaching university classes in Memphis and Vermont and holding screenings of his work at museums and festivals. Following the success of Kairos Dirt & the Errant Vacuum (2007), he was awarded a grant by the Sundance Film Institute and took part in a number of pitching forums. He programmes Anthology Film Archives' extensive, ongoing Cinema of Gender Transgression series.