I dictate instructions to the individual performers, who then enact improvised strip-teases (in silence) while adhering to specific directions of positioning and movement. The performances fail to reveal genitals. Perspective oscillates between three different shot compositions; positioning the performer, my engagement with the performer, and the space we inhabit to divert and re-focuses genital revelation. (…) Between trans filmmaker and trans performer, a trans gaze emerges, as we redefine our needs and desires for each other through the making process. The performer featured in the images and sample clip is long-time collaborator Jakob Van Lammeren. —Angelo Madsen Minax

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)