North by Current

After the inconclusive death of his young niece, filmmaker Angelo Madsen Minax returns to his rural Michigan hometown, preparing to make a film about a broken criminal justice system. Instead, he pivots to excavate the depths of generational addiction, Christian fervor, and trans embodiment. Lyrically assembled images, decades of home movies, and ethereal narration form an idiosyncratic and poetic undertow that guide a viewer through lifetimes and relationships. Like the relentless Michigan seasons, the meaning of family shifts, as Madsen, his sister, and his parents strive tirelessly to accept each other. Poised to incite more internal searching than provide clear statements or easy answers, NORTH BY CURRENT is a visual rumination on the understated relationships between mothers and children, truths and myths, losses and gains.

After the death of his two-year-old niece, artist and filmmaker Angelo Madsen Minax returns to his rural Michigan hometown to create a visual rumination on the understated relationships between mothers and children, truths and myths, losses and gains.

North By Current is an examination of growing up, the agony and joy of literal and metaphoric separation, and what it means to be a body moving through time. For me, a personal, first-person approach to storytelling was the only I could make this film. The merger of the personal and the political became an opportunity for my family members and myself to talk, collaborate, and grow together – our own version of transformative justice. Through our conversations, my parents developed an introspection that forced them to question their intrinsic understanding of the 'American Dream,' and their ability to negotiate their religious beliefs with their acceptance of me poses profound examples for the capacity of human love. In light of so many unresolved conflicts and on-going situations, my sister’s commitment to making the film with me demonstrates the care, generosity, and complexity that went into its process.

To explore the nature of time and transformation, whether through death or gender transition, it was formally imperative for me to use many different sources of archival footage as well as voice - both serve as metaphoric time travel. Vérité scenes are put in conversation with home movies, which are put in conversation with the stylized lyricism of an unseen ghost-child who drops in periodically to impart wisdom upon the viewer. The child’s voice is an omniscient, all-knowing, all-wise entity; a stand-in for both the figure of my niece, and the figure of my own childhood. Over the course of the film, the voice of the ghost-child weaves with my own voiceover, creating a dialog between us. Human relationality becomes the nexus for understanding and confronting trauma.

One of my goals was to demonstrate the ways in which real life is dirty, unrelenting, and never wraps up nicely, contrary to what movies would have you believe. When I set out to make North By Current I vowed to resist simplifying or over-explaining information for the sake of consumer consumption. I do not want an audience to passively consume this film, but rather engage with it, deeply. This goal led me to make a film with specific and embodied resistance to answering topical questions or stating facts; for example, I refuse to provide details about my transition. I supply scarce information about Mormonism, and I sidestep objective, unilateral, and/or singular storytelling as definitive truth. These refusals are intentional, political gestures.[1]

I address narrative with a similar approach of refusal: I chose to leave some questions unanswered and threads unwoven (How did Kalla die? When did you transition? What happened to David?). Simply put: a viewer is not entitled to every piece of information. The refusal to wrap up our story allows for the symbolic and real-life continuation of our struggles as relationships in flux, lives in-progress. In place of conventional narrative certainty, you are given raw emotion – in effect shifting the frame of reference for what a trans narrative can look like, feel like, do, be.


-Angelo Madsen Minax, February 2021