GÜLDEM DURMAZ
Güldem Durmaz was born in 1971 in Paris.
She now lives and works between Brussels, Istanbul and Paris.
After a Bachelor's degree in Modern French Litterature at La Sorbonne and language studies (Turkish, and English at the British Institute), she trained in Dramatic Arts
at the Théâtre de Chaillot, then at the École des Enfants Terribles.
She has worked as a film and theatre actress from 1994 on.
She has been writing and directing films since 2001.
Her work includes, and sometimes mixes, film-making, video installations,
and live performances.
Her films were selected and awarded in numerous international festivals, on 5 continents.
Her short fiction films, such as Şoför (The driver) (2001), and Koro (The chorus) (2002),
have been selected and rewarded in numerous international festivals.
In 2011, she directed Ben/O (I/him), an experimental documentary about kurdish transsexual artist Esmeray, which was screened at art venues like Les Halles de Schaerbeek in Brussels, La Gaîté Lyrique in Paris, Les Subsistances in Lyon, the MuCEm in Marseilles and the British Museum in London.
In 2016, she directed Together ! a multiscreen film about renewable energies, projected inside the giant cube of the Palais des Images of the PASS museum in Mons.
Her first feature, Kazarken - As We Dig, was released in 2016 after premiering at the Torino Film Festival.
In 2021, she directed Lazarus, based on A lovely morning by Marguerite Yourcenar, with Denis Lavant.
Since 2002, she also conducts video art workshops at the Maison du Geste et de l'Image, an arts and education center sponsored by the Paris City Hall - and in other art venues.
She's currently developing her second feature, Go-betweens.
Güldem's work explores the connections between memory, language and cultural
or transcultural identities, as she experiments with actors and non-actors,
secret or invented languages, spaces and situations both real and oneiric.