Riot Acts: Flaunting Gender Deviance in Music Performance

Directed by Angelo Madsen

Riot Acts is a transfabulous rockumentary representing the whole lives of transgender and gender variant musicians, through a first-hand perspective of the intersections between gender performance and stage performance. This feature-length documentary highlights issues crucial to interviewees such as songwriting, voice presentation, presenting a body or bodies on stage, audiences, venues, the idea of the spectacle, media representation, performing gender and notions about 'drag,' and the personal as political. The film culminates with the notions that identities and bodies are undeniably political, and the the trans experience isn't always one of tragedy, but one of creativity and joy.