Voltrans is a trans man initiative in Turkey, which is composed of three trans men that found each other in 2007. This documentary project came up in order to make the stories of those trans men coming together, acting together visible, share the experiences and problems of those people, document their own histories. In this feature-length movie that is shot since March 2012, trans activists who banded together in Voltrans sincerely tell what it means to be a trans man in a heterosexist and transphobic society which is founded upon binary gender system and how they fought back against stereotypes of masculinity and “trans manhood”.
Curator's statement Esra Özban and Esma Akyel:
"The documentary tells the story of Voltrans – the very first trans men initiative in Turkey – by the lips of its founders and LGBTI+ activists within the frame of how they acquainted with each other and how the initiative influenced on LGBTI+, feminist and transfeminist movements in Turkey".
Rüzgâr Buşki is an artist, director and producer from Istanbul. His artistic practice varies within printmaking, performance, video and film. He studied Journalism at Istanbul University. Since 2011, Buşki studies multimedia at Berlin University of Arts in the class of Prof. Dr. Hito Steyerl. He is one of the founders of Kanka Productions, a trans-feminist production collective for empowerment of women and trans on fields of visual and performing arts. His first feature documentary with Kanka Productions, #direnayol had its world premiere on the 15th !f Istanbul Independent Film Festival. Currently he is working on his second feature hybrid documentary on queer grief practices from Turkey.
Ulaş Dutlu, born in Eskişehir in 1987, graduated from the Department of Turkish Language and Literature at Eskişehir Osmangazi University and worked as a text writer for advertisement agencies for three years. Having worked as a boom operator in the cinema sector between 2011-2013, Ulaş Dutlu keeps on conducting studies on sound. He worked as a sound technician for the 2013 documentary titled “Diren Ayol”, a Turkish-German co-production. Voltrans is his first feature documentary film.