Broken Promises

BROKEN PROMISES is a performance art short by Bee Guzman-Elliott who expresses their grief and love as a young person living through the 6th mass extinction in the age of the Anthropocene... when the alarms have been blaring for years now and our somatic-ecology is calling to us louder than ever. It's a story of slipping love. And a call for transformative action that begins with (re)kindling our ability to feel--our ability to grieve and dive beneath the surface of "climate change" to start healing a deadly addiction to fossil fuels from the inside out.

Broken Promises explores an abstracted embodiment of the idea that what we do to the world, we do to ourselves. This short birthed a continued study of which it’s sequel; Village of Spiders, is soon to release with the reconstruction and regeneration of the same pipes.

  • Bee Guzman-Elliott
    Director/Editor
    Unbecoming
  • Austin Smith
    Camera Operator
  • Project Type:
    Experimental, Short
  • Genres:
    Performance art
  • Runtime:
    5 minutes 46 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    December 1, 2020
  • Production Budget:
    30 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    Yes - University of Washington - Bothell
  • The Artists Forum 2021 Spoken Word Competition: (the) politics of emotion
    New York City
    United States
    December 31, 2021
    Formal World Premiere
    Grand Prize Winner
Director Biography

Bee is a queer-femme collaborator and storyteller passionate about the role of arts & culture in co-creating evolving futures with invitations to feel deeper and more connected. They are fascinated by all that is able to touch minds and hearts while yearning to explore the experiences and stories that connect us deeper in our somatic-ecology. Their passion comes with a focus and determination that fuels their outside-of-the-box thinking and ability to work diligently with teams (and low budgets); willing to do all it takes to bring a vision to life.

Bee has particular interests in public art, installation, storytelling, music, and the challenges of creating art not just of dystopias or utopias, but those of which emerge somewhere in the between... stories and experiences that help us stay grounded through our full range of emotions and possibilities in the 21st century.

They are currently drawn to exploring ways of fusing somatic-ecology, physics, and creative storytelling to share deeper understandings of our global climate systems, dynamics, variability, and change to prompt reflection of how we relate.

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