“An Overt Anti-Patriarchal, Anti-Assimilationist Gesture Within the Framework of ‘Queer Refusal'”: Angelo Madsen Minax on His Tribeca-premiering North By Current

One of the most thrillingly radical aspects of Angelo Madsen Minax’s astonishing North By Current, which premiered at the Berlinale and now makes its North American debut at Tribeca, is the film’s centering of absence, of its maker’s firm belief in the idea that “a viewer is not entitled to every piece of information.” Minax began shooting North By Current upon his return home to rural Michigan after the death of his niece, a toddler whose passing put Minax’s emotionally fragile sister and her formerly incarcerated husband in the crosshairs of Children’s Protective Services (which in turn led to law enforcement investigating CPS). The life-shattering event also set the stage for another confrontation of sorts, between Minax himself and his Mormon parents who felt themselves still grieving the “loss” of their own child — a girl named Angela who’d transitioned to this stranger with a camera filming in their living room. And yet North By Current staunchly refuses to be about any of this. Instead Minax focuses on the bigger universal picture – love and the change of seasons that we all share. Ultimately, his steadfast withholding of answers allows us to discover deeper ones within ourselves. So to find out how he did (and did not) do it, Filmmaker reached out to the multidisciplinary artist just prior to the doc’s North American premiere (in TFF’s Viewpoints section).

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.