April Maxey Aims to Break the Stigma of Sex Work With Her Sundance Film

Picture Supply: Andrea Dosouto

April Maxey is utilizing her story to interrupt the stigma that permeates intercourse work. Debuting at this 12 months’s Sundance Movie Pageant, Work tells the story of Gabi (Marisela Zumbado), a queer Latina freelance editor who impulsively returns to her previous job at a lap-dance parlor to attempt to recover from a nasty breakup. It is there that she reconnects with a good friend from her previous and finally finds herself once more.

Provided that the 13-minute movie is predicated on Maxey’s personal expertise, the director did not have to go looking very far for inspiration. “I had at all times needed to inform a narrative about this chapter in my life the place I used to be dancing and I had gone again after a breakup. I used to be on this transitional chapter of my life the place I might moved and I needed to begin over,” Maxey tells POPSUGAR. “After which through the pandemic, I went by means of one other breakup and I used to be actually discovering it essential for me to spend time alone. I used to be simply doing a variety of reflecting.”

Maxey ended up rewriting the script to mirror the feelings she went by means of through the pandemic. Her objective was to make a movie about “the method of letting go of a previous model of your self and telling this messy, nuanced, sophisticated journey of what it seems to be like to maneuver ahead.” She provides, “The underlying concept is that it is OK to be in solitude, work on your self, and end up once more. Yow will discover moments of peace in that.” These emotions of peace and hopefulness are evident because the movie progresses, however particularly within the ultimate scene the place we see Gabi staring out into the sky simply because the solar begins trickling in. “It is not presupposed to be a tragic ending,” Maxey explains. “I hope individuals really feel just a little uplifted by that, and perhaps individuals can have extra compassion for ladies which have completely different experiences than them.”

Picture Supply: Melinda James

The story of embarking on a journey of self-discovery after a breakup is a story as previous as time, however Work units itself aside by shedding mild on the world of underground dance events. With none judgement, it reveals how intercourse work is rather like every other job and the characters are individuals with issues like everybody else. “There’s a variety of stigma round intercourse work, stripping, dancing, and stuff like that. There’s a variety of disgrace round it. And I do not suppose that there needs to be,” Maxey says. “If [viewers] are in a position to observe [Gabi] and her journey and perceive her, hopefully it’s going to problem individuals’s beliefs.”

Maxey has already began engaged on the characteristic model of the brief, however she’s curious to listen to individuals’s takes on the place to take Gabi’s story subsequent. Ought to Gabi get into one other relationship now that is she’s discovered herself? Or is she higher off alone? Personally, Maxey want to see her single for some time. “She’s going to be prioritizing herself and looking for what fulfills her, and specializing in that. It is likely to be a messy journey, two steps ahead and one step again, however it is vitally human,” Maxey notes, including, “Possibly she’ll get on a relationship app and be like, ‘No, I am good.'”

Along with the characteristic, Maxey desires to proceed telling tales. “I actually simply wish to get extra alternatives directing this 12 months as a result of I really feel like I might at all times be strengthening that muscle. I really feel like I am nonetheless studying,” Maxey says. “I wish to do a queer horror movie. It has been calling me!”

No matter what Maxey does subsequent, she’s undoubtedly one to look at.

Work is at present screening at this 12 months’s Sundance Movie Pageant from now till Jan. 30.