Riot Acts: Flaunting Gender Deviance in Music Performance

Representing the whole lives of transgender and gender variant musicians, each story is one of a journey in progress through a first-hand perspective of the intersections between gender performance and stage performance. The feature documentary Riot Acts:Flaunting Gender Deviance in Music Performance will allow a venue for a particular niche of trans existence to be revealed and celebrated.

Discussed topics include songwriting, voice presentation, coping with voice changes, passing/not passing, presenting a body/bodies on stage, audiences, venues, the idea of the spectacle, societal and media representation, performing gender and notions about “drag,” and the personal as political, culminating with the notions that identities and bodies are undeniably political, and that the trans experience isn’t always one of tragedy.

The individuals and bands featured in Riot Acts are celebrated as talented, inspiring, sexy, critical and fully three-dimensional in a manner that purposefully counters the vision of isolation and destitution frequently portrayed in mainstream media. As transpeople ourselves, the producers seek to capture trans and gender variant identities as complexly as they are embodied and performed, both on and off the stage.

Whether a personal journey, a political journey, or a literal journey, the aspect of travel, through years or miles, is a binding stylistic element throughout Riot Acts. As trans people, our bodies are nontraditional and our ideas about culture and identity are non traditional. Why shouldn’t our way of making art be non traditional as well?

Featured inteviewees include Ryka Aoki from Los Angeles,Anderson Toone, Lipstick Conspiracy, Katastrophe and Trannysaurus Sex from San Francisco, Basic Fix from Portland (and San Francisco), Ryder Richardson, in Seattle, Tough Tough Skin, and Venus Demars of Minneapolis, Adhamh Roland of St. Louis and San Francisco, Jessica Xavier in DC, The Shondes and Novice Theory in Brooklyn, NY, The Degenerettes in Baltimore, and Systyr Act in Boston, The Cliks of Toronto and Coyote Grace, Sonoma County.

Queer Film Festival MEZIPATRA is a specialized competitive film festival focusing on gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer related films. The aims of the festival organized on a non-profit base are to promote quality human-interest films and contribute to the emancipation of gender minorities in the Czech Republic.

The screening is in partnership with the Mezipatra Queer Film Festival. Mezipatra is a specialized competitive film festival focusing on gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer related films.