TICKETS $15

Doors 2:30 p.m.; Event 3 p.m.
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THE EXPERIENCE

Join us for a screening of A Body to Live In followed by a post-film conversation with director Angelo Madsen. This intimate and visually inventive documentary explores the life and legacy of Fakir Musafar, a central figure in the queer body-modification community and the development of the “Modern Primitive” movement.

Following the film, Director Angelo Madsen will join us for a Q&A. 

ON SCREEN: A Body to Live In

2025. Directed by Angelo Madsen. Runtime: 1 hour 38 minutes. 

An intimate inquiry into the life and work of Fakir Musafar, an influential figure in the queer body-modification community. The film explores his outsized impact and the formation of the “Modern Primitive” movement through decades of archives and interviews with those close to him. Creative treatment of the archives presents them as living texts—photos and video are layered, inverted, and interpolated to bring them new meaning and texture. Angelo’s sophomore feature is supplemented by seamlessly interwoven personal accounts to craft an portrayal that is loving yet not afraid of critique, embracing both the joy of self-discovery as well as the complex spirituality Musafar came to represent. Through his life and work, the film gives rise to profound questions of bodily autonomy and the body’s relationship to our sense of self.

ON STAGE: 

Angelo Madsen (Director) – Angelo Madsen (previously known as Madsen Minax or Angelo Madsen Minax 2005-2024) is a multi-disciplinary artist, filmmaker, and academic. He also curates, writes, performs, and composes. His projects weave personal and collective histories, cultures, and kinships, with interests in self-mythologies, embodiment, and the politics of desire. Madsen’s works have shown at Berlinale, Sundance, Toronto International Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Tribeca, De La Warr Pavilion, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, REDCAT, Museum of Moving Image, Anthology Film Archives, British Film Institute, and dozens of documentary, LGBT, and experimental film festivals around the world. He is a Creative Capital Fellow (2025), a United States Artists Fellow (2023), a Guggenheim Fellow (2022), and has participated in residencies at Yaddo, MacDowell, Pioneer Works, Headlands, the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the Core Program at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, and others. His film, “North By Current” (2021), aired on season 34 of POV (PBS), was nominated for an Independent Spirit award, and won the Cinema Eye Honors Spotlight award, Best Writing award from the IDA and numerous festival jury prizes. A New York Times Critics Pick, “North By Current” has been called “A beautiful, complex wonder of a film,” by Rolling Stone and “A titanic work” by Criterion. His newest feature “A Body to Live In,” premiered at True/False Film Festival in 2025 and is currently in theaters nationwide. It has been praised as “Carnal knowledge” by Art Forum and “A cinema of devotion,” by Film Comment.

Donal Mosher (Moderator) – Donal Mosher is a filmmaker, photographer, writer, and musician. His performance work combines traditional, personal, and conceptual storytelling; folk and esoteric musical instruments; and documentary and hand manipulated archival cinema.He is the collaborative director with Michael Palmieri of the award-winning documentary features The Gospel of Eureka, and October Country.  His performance piece “Strange Gardens” has been performed at the Risk/Reward Festival and toured the U.S. with Pop Up Magazine.  He is the co-creature with Michael Palmieri of the collaborative live cinema/performance series Spectral Transmissions that has been performed at PamCut, The Museum Of The Moving Image NYC,The International Documentary Festival Amsterdam, and many festivals world-wide.