Angelo Madsen Minax (born 1983) is an American filmmaker and interdisciplinary artist.
Life and career
Angelo Madsen Minax was born in
Petoskey, Michigan
Petoskey ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is the county seat and largest city in Emmet County. Part of Northern Michigan, Petoskey is a popular Midwestern resort town, as it sits on the shore of Little Traverse Bay, a bay of La ...
in the US in 1983.
He studied art at the School of the
Art Institute of Chicago
The Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago's Grant Park, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the world. Recognized for its curatorial efforts and popularity among visitors, the museum hosts approximately 1.5 mill ...
and at
Northwestern University and is an associate professor of time-based media at the
University of Vermont.
Minax works in documentary, fiction and hybrid film forms, sound and music performances, text and media installations. Minax's films deal with themes of love and death, and punk, queer, rural, and activist cultures.
''North by Current,'' an auto-ethnographic film about death, grief, and trans identity features home movies from the 1960s - 1980s as well as footage shot by Minax between 2016 and 2020. The experimental documentary is narrated both by Minax and The Child, a character who can be interpreted as Minax's dead niece, his younger self, or a more distant observer. ''North by Current'' premiered internationally at the 2021
Berlinale,
in the U.S. at the 2021
Tribeca Film Festival, and has screened nationally and internationally. Minax has also presented films at the
European Media Art Festival, the
Anthology Film Archives in New York and at numerous other film festivals. His work has been on view at the
Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the
Leslie Lohman Museum, and the
Museum of Fine Arts Houston.
Minax is Associate Professor of Time-Based Media at the
University of Vermont.
In 2022 he was awarded a
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...
in Film-Video. In 2023 he was named a
United States Artists (USA) fellow.
Filmography
* ''Bigger on the Inside'' (2022)
* ''North By Current'' (2021)
* ''Two Sons and a River of Blood'' (2021) (with Amber Bemak)
* ''At the River'' (2020)
* ''The Eddies (2018)''
* ''Kairos Dirt & the Errant Vacuum (2017)''
* ''The Source is a Hole (2017)''
* ''Separation of the Earth (By Fire)''
* ''My Most Handsome Monster (2014)''
* ''The Year I Broke My Voice (2012)''
* ''Riot Acts: Flaunting Gender Deviance in Music Performance (2010)''
References
1983 births
Film directors from Michigan
Living people
American LGBT film directors
People from Petoskey, Michigan
School of the Art Institute of Chicago alumni
Northwestern University alumni
University of Vermont faculty
Transgender academics
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