Read Our Interview of Cam Screenwriter Isa Mazzei & Star Madeline Brewer On The Occasion Of The Film's Premiere On Netflix →

For anyone who has painstakingly worked to build and curate their Instagram page, only to have it disabled unexpectedly, you know just how devastating the loss can be. For those whose accounts have been hacked, the consequences can be much worse. Thus is the case for Alice (played by Madeline Brewer), a young and ambitious camgirl on the rise, who is relentlessly creating new shows and characters to improve her ranking on freegirls.live, a fictional camming site, designed and created specifically for the film. When Alice’s account is hacked and hijacked by someone with an uncanny resemblance, she is forced to outwit her doppelgänger while watching her own identity, both online and irl, degrade rapidly. Aside from the psychic thrill that the narrative provides, this film offers a refreshing subversion to the standard tropes that come from the sexy, horror genre. From the ways that sex work is represented in the film, to the ways that the screenwriter, Isa Mazzei and director, Daniel Goldhaber challenge the standard director-authorship, this film provides a wealth of new templates to consider that are seemingly radical, yet unsurprisingly, quite logical. In Mazzei and Goldhaber’s Cam, the hyper-indulgent and semi-private world of camming is given life in a way that is instantly translatable by the genre. A surreal, thrill ride that seeps into your unconscious mind and humanizes the very real people that hitherto have been unjustly stigmatized by the film and media industry at large.

Click here to read the full interview.

Cam is available to stream as of today on Netflix.

Sistaaz of the Castle Explores Transgender Sex Workers That Roam The Streets of Cape Town, South Africa

Photographer Jan Hoek and fashion designer Duran Lantink present Sistaaz of the Castle, a project about the style and fashion of transgender sex workers in Cape Town, South Africa. Together they created a series of photographs and a fashion collection around their fashionable appearances, and their ability to make the most exuberant creations of everything they find. The project will be shown during FashionWeek Amsterdam and an exhibition at Foam Photography Museum Amsterdam. The local sex workers’ organization, S.W.E.A.T., gave Jan and Duran the opportunity to meet and collaborate with their transgender support group Sistaazhood. For this project, Jan and Duran zoom in on six girls from the community: Coco (25), Cleopatra (23) Sulaiga (30), Gabby (29) Flavinia (33) and Joan Collins (57). Most of the girls are homeless, living under a bridge beside the castle of Cape Town. Jan Hoek made photographs of them, their lives and their outfits. The documentary images serve as a lookbook for the collection of Duran Lantink. The designer was inspired by the creative ability of the girls to produce beautiful creations from found garments. He recognized a similarity to his own process, using different recycling methods and collage techniques. Along with the creations, the artists were interested in how the girls would like to look if they had unlimited possibilities. One of the girls would like to work in a luxurious Victorian brothel. The 57-year-old Joan Collins dreams of a wedding dress and a third wants to become Miss Africa. All these fantasies are translated into a dream-couture capsule collection by Duran, which is also photographed by Jan. In addition to the fashion show and exhibition, a printed publication (APE) will be published and distributed worldwide in March 2016. Eventually, Jan and Duran will return to South Africa to present the Sistaaz of the Castle project on its original site. Usually, transgender sex workers are presented as perpetrator or victim in the South African media. The girls of Sistaazhood expressed their wish to be seen positively in the news. The collection will be presented during FashionWeek Amsterdam at the Gashouder on January 16 at 7p.m.. The Foam exhibition will be on view until January 20.