January 15, 2021

In this episode, I speak with artist and filmmaker Rüzgâr Buşki. In our conversation, we talk about immigrating from Instanbul, where to get great Turkish food in Berlin, discrimination in Germany, and their current project, I’ve Got the Power. Because I’ve Got the Power explores how imagination and fantasy can be used as tool to process and heal grief and be basis for creating a new reality, this episode’s song is Gaye Su Akyol’s “İstikrarlı Hayal Hakikattir/Consistent Fantasy is Reality.”

Photo Credit: Sibel Özen[image Description: Rüzgâr stands by a large rosebush and leans their head into a large flower. Behind them is a high fence with flowering vines. The wear a multicolored shirt beneath a red jacket.] — Photo Credit: Sibel Özen
[image Description: Rüzgâr stands by a large rosebush and leans their head into a large flower. Behind them is a high fence with flowering vines. The wear a multicolored shirt beneath a red jacket.]

Rüzgâr’s Bio

Rüzgâr Buşki is an artist, director and producer from Istanbul based in Berlin. Their artistic practice varies within printmaking, performance, video and film. They explore themes such as belonging, affect, desire and tradition. Buşki produces and directs hybrid documentaries by building empowering productions for and with marginalised communities, queering the rules of filmmaking. They are one of the founders of Kanka Productions, a trans-feminist production house for empowerment of women and trans on fields of visual and performing arts. Buşki studied Fine Arts in Berlin University of Arts and graduated with a Meisterschüler title from the class of Prof. Dr. Hito Steyerl. In 2019 they received the Zeliş Deniz Queer Cinema Award. They are also the winner of Karl Hofer Prize 2019.

About Kanka Productions

Kanka Productions was founded during the production of the documentary film #resistayol in 2013. Based in Istanbul, Berlin and Dublin, we are a growing network of professionals working in film, theater, fine arts, music and storytelling. We create top quality interdisciplinary works with a Transfeminist vision. Our biggest aim is empowering ourselves and our communities through art.

Dert Bende Derman Bende / I’ve Got the Power Logline

Amidst rising oppression in Turkey, four Superheroes join forces to confront death and seek healing after the tragic deaths of their loved ones. Through music and glamorous performances they transform pain into power by queering grief.

Dert Bende Derman Bende / I’ve Got the Power Synopsis

Shot over four years, I’ve Got the Power portrays four Superheroes who join forces to confront death and seek healing after the tragic deaths of their loved ones. Through music and glamorous performances they transform pain into power by “queering grief.” As the Covid-19 pandemic hits, we are faced with the loss of loved ones and the loss of the world that we perceive as ‘ordinary’. In this film Turkey’s queer community shares its experience of how they face loss and how they grieve. With this film we share our healing perspective to the collective grief of the world.

How does one heal after losing their dearest?
How can one say goodbye without a funeral?
How can families grieve for their deceased when themselves are under attack?
What if there is no justice, not even a mere prosecution?
What does it mean to die as an ‘other’?
How can a fringe community create their own tradition of mourning?

As Hande, Salih, Buse and Nihal face their fears, confront death and grieve, their long-time friends and comrades, the director and her crew accompany them in their journey. Coming together in a storytelling workshop that was exclusively developed for this documentary and tailored for the protagonists, they reveal their unique ordeal of losing family and friends in tragic deaths. Each starts a journey from being reserved and hesitant to open and attentive. As they reflect and share, they laugh and cry; they hug, hold and lift each other up. They sit together in silence. They feel awkward, funny and weak. They find power in being weak. They create power.

As a direct confrontation with death, at the end of their unique experience in the workshop, the protagonists develop their own funeral ceremonies in detail, as a tribute to their untold farewells. When the funerals start, the protagonists are reborn as superheroes in their musical fantasy. Each protagonist chooses a tribute song, inspired by a rendition of a song at their late comrade’s burial. Together each of the four create glamorous performances of music and/or spoken word. Through costumes, dancers and the mood, a glamorous gay atmosphere redefines our relation with funerals in a utopian vision. These dream funerals are not about saying farewells but celebrating the lives of our queer protagonists.

I’ve Got the Power is an invitation to pause, to give ourselves time, face death and grieve. This is an invitation to take a break in order to continue with our daily and political struggle in good health.