Screening: Cafe Treece 6:00pm (338 Brown St.)

Amy Leonard
freeRADlab

Madsen Minax's documentary Riot Acts: Flaunting Gender Deviance in Music Performance features transgender musicians and performance artists discussing their music, art, and identities. Highlighting acts from across the United States and an act from Toronto, a wide range of styles and personalities are represented. The artists discuss issues such as songwriting, voice (and how it is effected by hormones), audience reception, and identity both as a gender and as a human being.

In a society where gender norms implicitly dictate most social interactions, transgender people find themselves occupying an unconventional, and often unaccepted, social space. The manner in which trans artists utilize this non-normative space varies from simply acknowledging it as an essential part of themselves to deliberately riffing on traditional gender norms. Some artists define themselves in terms of a specific gender, while others choose not to classify themselves in those terms. However, all the artists interviewed in Riot Acts are first and foremost human beings, artists, and individuals. Though their gender identity is a part of who they are, it does not define them or their art.

Though Riot Acts: Flaunting Gender Deviance in Music Performance follows transgender musicians, it speaks to a larger questions about identity that all people can relate to. What is gender, and how does it define who we are? How does gender affect our relationships to ourselves and others? How does gender oppress the expression of our true selves?

Movie site: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1527721/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/RiotActsthemovie

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TRT: 76min
Language: English