SEEK BROMANCE (2021)
PREMIERE: IDFA, International Documentary film festival of Amsterdam 2021
WINNER OF SILVER LION VENICE BIENNALE 2022
DIRECTOR’S QUOTE
“I set out to make a work that I needed to see while struggling with my gender. I wanted to make a trans work where it's not about educating cis people or being shiny positive examples, but a real story, where the trans protagonists are complex and troubled, progressive and admirable, problematic and relatable. Where they are rebels, lovers, creators.
Trans characters in the media have often been depicted as lonely outliers, some exceptional figures detached from the people around them. In this work, though, I didn't want to explain our gender and identities to the audience, but rather show how we do that to each other, from one trans person to another, where it's not about justifying our existence but about sharing our process.”
Synopsis
Seek Bromance is a 4-hour trans epos situated at the end of the world somewhere between insta-reality and sci-fi dystopia. It shows a relationship between two transmasculines who met during the beginning of the pandemic, who both have a history of performing extremely feminine characters but who have very different attitudes as to what masculinity can be. The images that Samira Elagoz captures with his collaborator, Brazilian artist Cade Moga, document their relation, from the moment they first met to their final breakup. But they also document Elagoz’s long farewell to his femme identity. A painfully beautiful, deserted world, as if a virus had wiped everything out, and they could only be infected by each other. With just a car, some cash, and a supply of testosterone they expose the integral dynamics of masculinity and femininity.
Direction & concept: Samira Elagoz
In collaboration with: Cade Moga
Featuring Samira Elagoz & Cade Moga
Film footage: Samira Elagoz & Cade Moga
Edited by: Samira Elagoz
Dramaturgy: Samira Elagoz
Advisors: Bruno Listopad, Antonia Steffens
Extra editing advice: Otto Rissanen, Jessica Dunn Rovinelli, Tiana Hemlock-Yensen, Valerie Cole, Michael Scerbo, Daniel Donato
Script advice: Tiana Hemlock-Yensen, Richard Sand, Valerie Cole
Advice during filming: Jeanette Groenendaal
Production: SPRING Performing Arts Festival
Co-production: Frascati Amsterdam, Kunstenwerkplaats Pianofabriek Brussels, Black Box Teater Oslo, BIT Teatergarasjen Bergen,
Finish Cultural Institute for the Benelux, Arsenic - Contemporary Performing Arts Center, Lausanne
With the support of Fonds Podiumkunsten NL, Koneen Säätiö FI, Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds NL, Ammodo NL
VENICE BIENNALE SILVER LION STATEMENT
“Bringing his body to the stage and visually sectioning it with its paradoxes and its multiform facets the way Nan Goldin does, focusing his implacable gaze on solitude, on the human relationship between genders in the digital era and in a society that eschews regularisation and control, exploring the porous boundaries between the real and the virtual, investigating the effects of love, gender, femininity, desire, its consequent annihilation and the brutal covert power plays, Samira Elagoz embarks on a journey that is intimate and poetic, yet ironic and perturbing at the same time, exploring the clichés and issues that concern not only self-representation in the media, the behaviour of the male in his attempts at seduction in a relationship of domination and/or submission, as well as the tool-body as the terrain for a necessary and inevitable artistic experimentation.
Camera in hand, using his own self and relying on personal experiences cultivated on applications and websites, amalgamated with videos and photographic footage of real life, highlighting the manipulation of bodies on these platforms and skilfully broadening the typical relationships between masculinty and femininity online, in his creations Samira Elagoz flirts with the infinite possibilities of performance to shape an original language and offers us – with the aim of experimenting his own changing gender identity as an expressive devining road – a unique brand of performance-reporting, multimedia happening and docufiction”.
PRESS / REVIEWS
“Mind blowing gender Odyssey” - Theaterkrant NL
“A show not to be missed - Rarely do you get such an intimate insight into the complex process of changing gender and identity.” - De Standaard
“Impressive and thought-provoking, 4h, not a minute too long” - HIFF
“Breathtaking romance at the end of the world” - De Morgen
“Rumoured to be queer, provocative and emotionally intense, Seek Bromance was a must-see for me.” - A Shade Colder
“..Signals Elagoz as an important, rising force in the experimental art world.” “Art Dusseldorf Magazine
“Best movies of 2023” - Screenslate
“We discussed trans-masculinity and performative cinema with the director and protagonist of the cinematic performance” - Cineuropa.org
“Result is a 'trans romance', set at the end of the world” - Parool.nl
“Isn’t it a bit fucked up to want to become a man now?” Isn’t it revolutionary?” - Ruhr Triennale Magazine
Top20 works of 2021, “What Seek Bromance has in common with Elagoz' earlier works is its singular ability to completely upend any viewer's beliefs about gender, intimacy and sexuality, and to make space for new ideas.” - Marijn Lems, Critic for NRC
“It’s high femme & high masc at once, and one after the other. How it knows, shows, and speaks of damnation! Scenic explorations of sexual orientation via body parts meet confessional rigor. Driving in a city, dancing in a desert, it seeks.”
“A painfully beautiful, deserted world, as if a virus had wiped everything out. What remains are empty words, words like man and woman - as mere relics of the past.“
“I’ve never seen a trans work like this”
