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Released the same year as PARIS IS BURNING, Susana Aikin and Carlos Aparicio’s extraordinary documentary THE SALT MINES focuses on three homeless Lantinx trans women living in a parking lot of old garbage trucks on Manhattan’s West Side. Aikin and Aparicio document the daily life and hardships faced by these women living on the margins of society. Five years later in THE TRANSFORMATION, they reconnected with one of that film’s most engaging subjects, now living as a man in Texas, forced to transition back by an evangelical missionary that offered her much-needed shelter and safety in exchange.
Explores the lives of Sara, Gigi and Giovanna, three Latino transvestites who for years have lived on the streets of Manhattan supporting their drug addictions through prostitution. They made their temporary home inside broken garbage trucks that the Sanitation Department keeps next to the salt deposits used in the winter to melt the snow. The three friends share the place known as "The Salt Mines".
Ricardo was once Sara, a homeless HIV positive transvestite, living in the underbelly of Manhattan. Today he is a churchgoing, married man, "saved" by a Dallas ministry. He has renounced his homosexuality, but is his conversion complete? Susana Aiken and Carlos Aparicio offer an intimate look at Ricardo's transformation.