The Eddies

From above and below ground, a man named Eddie describes flood lines, levees and trivial histories of the crumbling infrastructure of Memphis, TN. In this same city, the filmmaker, a recent transsexual transplant, watches war films and contemplates masculine connectivity as he attempts to integrate into the American South. He posts a Craigslist ad asking men to masturbate on-camera with their firearms. He receives a single response from a man who’s name is also Eddie.

Paced, static images of Mississippi River currents, freight trains and decaying architecture mark the above-ground landscape of Memphis, while shaky, handheld darkness, with flickers of light, depict glimpses of the city’s underground tunnels. The encounter between the filmmaker and “Eddie No. 2” is revealed on camera, explicitly. The underground world becomes a lens through which the challenges of the above-ground world can be reconsidered, while coincidence and loose association reveal an inherent human desire to belong and to search for physical and psychic fulfilment.

Angelo Madsen Minax is a director based between New York and Vermont. He received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2005. His filmography spans documentary and hybrid filmmaking formats, narrative cinema, experimental and essay film. His prolific practice transgresses form, style and narrative to explore queer and trans intimacies, chosen and biological structures of kinship, cosmic, natural, and technological phenomena. His works have been screened and exhibited at the European Media Arts Festival (Osnabrück), Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), Anthology Film Archives (New York), British Film Institute (London), Museum of Fine Arts (Houston) and REDCAT (Los Angeles). Minax is currently an Assistant Professor of Time-Based Media at the University of Vermont. His second feature documentary, North By Current (2021), is currently in production.

At the River (2020), Two Steps on the Water (2019), The Eddies (2018), Because of Us (2018), The Source Is a Hole (2017), Kairos Dirt & the Errant Vacuum (2017), The Bowels of the Universe (With Shining Knees) (2016), To Summon and Chase Away (2015), Separation of the Earth (By Fire) (2015), Forward into the Afternoon (2014), My Most Handsome Monster (2014), Like Some Other Men (2013), The Year I Broke My Voice (2012), Riot Acts: Flaunting Gender Deviance in Music Performance (2010)