The paths our queer elders have paved is rich and often unsung.
What can we learn from their ingenuity? How can we consider cultural responsibility within a historical context? What is the relationship between sexuality and spirituality? Why do we need rituals? Why do we need art?

Through discovering the photography and performance work of LGBT and kink icon Fakir Musafar (1930-2018), these are just a few of the questions A BODY TO LIVE IN asks.

Shot on rich 16mm film and with extensive, never before seen archival materials, A BODY TO LIVE IN is an immersive, enrapturing visual experience; a dive into the historical, ethical, artistic, and spiritual dimensions of the body modification movement.

Using Fakir’s early experiments in body play and “gender flex,” his photographic and performance works invite us to trace the body modification movement as it emerged in western LGBT subculture in the 1970s. The film introduces us to early key figures – Fakir, Jim Ward, Doug Malloy – whose collaborative experimentation at gay underground BDSM parties led to the first piercing shop (Gauntlet Enterprises, Los Angeles, 1978), a subsequent revision of the DSM’s (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) definition of self-harm, and an entire subculture. Insights from Annie Sprinkle, Ron Athey, Cléo Dubois, Idexa Stern, Jim Ward, Midori, Sheree Rose, and others provoke deeper reflections about art making, surviving the AIDS epidemic, the role of the spiritual within the erotic, and ethical dimensions of myth-making.

A BODY TO LIVE IN is written and directed by Angelo Madsen Minax, who has been participating in queer, trans, sex work, and kink communities for over 15 years. He first encountered Fakir’s photography in 2003 as a young trans person, and was introduced to Fakir in 2005. The two shared community until Fakir’s death. Madsen’s film Kairos Dirt and the Errant Vacuum (2017), about a cross-dimensional queer romance, was one of the last film’s Fakir saw in the theater before his passing in 2018. He claimed it was his favorite film.

Minax’s last feature film NORTH BY CURRENT, was released to critical acclaim in 2021, premiering at the Berlin International Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, and airing on PBS. It won an IDA award for best writing, a Spotlight Award from Cinema Eye Honors, was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award, and listed in Rolling Stone’s top 20 films of the year. Even with a robust track record for successfully creating inventive films, the content of this new work provides unique challenges to accessing support and funding: People are afraid of sex. Regardless of how “progressive” folks are or would like to be, our puritanical, patriarchal, hetero-normative world, enforces strict barriers when it comes to nudity, the erotic, BDSM, and gender transformation. Simply put, this project has come up against homophobia, transphobia, and sex phobia. With these systemic barriers in place, we come to our community to ask your support in realizing this important new work. Our current urgent funding needs are specifically to continue principal photography.

You can learn more about the film and the film’s team at abodytolivein.com. We’re grateful for your support.

I’m not my body, I just live in it.
– Fakir Musafar

Self portrait by Fakir Musafar, “A Perfect Gentleman,” 1959

DONATIONS ARE TAX-DEDUCTIBLE. Please note donations made via credit card incur a small fee on our end, if you’re feeling oldschool, paper checks (no fee) can be sent to UnionDocs 352 Onderdonk Ave, Ridgewood, NY 11385. Please note that it’s for this project!

We would like to thank the Catapult Film Fund and LEF Foundation for the risks you have taken henceforth to support this work.

“I want to donate A LOT! Are there any opportunities to earn a credit on the film?”
Short answer: Let’s talk! :)

“When will I get to see the film?”
Most likely, mid-late 2024.