Private Project

Andrew a Strong Courageous Warrior.

A voyeuristic look at the daily life of Andrew and Abigail. They are increasingly becoming one, alternating between male and female. Which of them is real?

A. Liparoto studied the construction of identity and left womanhood to subsequently transform into a male and androgynous person. Filmed over nine months in the maker’s apartment, real life becomes a performance in which it seems almost impossible to escape the fiction’s power.

  • Aay Liparoto
    Director
  • Aay Liparoto
    Editors
  • Eva Giolo
    Assistant Editors
    Remote
  • Judy Landkammer
    Assistant Editors
    Henry
  • Ruben Nachtergaele
    Sound
  • KASK
    Producer
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Experimental, Short
  • Genres:
    Queer, Women, Artfilm, Documentary
  • Runtime:
    18 minutes
  • Completion Date:
    January 4, 2016
  • Production Budget:
    1,000 EUR
  • Country of Origin:
    Belgium
  • Country of Filming:
    Belgium
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    Yes - Royal School of Arts Ghent
  • IFFR - International Film Festival Rotterdam 2016
    Rotterdam
    Netherlands
    February 4, 2016
    World Premiere
  • Docville - International Documentary Film Festival 2017
    Leuven
    Belgium
    March 23, 2017
  • 21st Split Film Festival 2016

    September 16, 2016
    Croatian Premiere
  • Asterisco Festival Internacional de Cine LGBTIQ 2016
    Buenos Aires
    Argentina
    November 5, 2016
    South America
  • Xposed Queer Festival
    Berlin
    Germany
    May 14, 2016
    German Premiere
  • Strangelove Queer Festival
    Antwerpen
    Belgium
    June 3, 2016
    Solo Exhibition
  • Bozar Cinema
    Brussels
    Belgium
    May 14, 2016
  • OFFOFF Cinema
    Ghent
    Belgium
    April 25, 2016
  • WORM
    Rotterdam
    Netherlands
    March 8, 2017
Director Biography - Aay Liparoto

A. LIPAROTO (1987, USA) was educated in Visual Arts in London and at the KASK Ghent, and makes work that researches vulnerability, subjectivity and the borders of life and performance.' Andrew a strong courageous warrior.' is Liparoto’s first film and premiered at the IFFR 2016. This film is one piece in a series of works titled ‘Andrew has his period’, from which Liparoto was commissioned to perform at SMAK Museum Ghent, and invited for solo show as part of Strangelove Festival Antwerpen, May 2016.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

‘Is it real?’ I am often asked. I guess it is the concept of a real or an authentic identity that I am essentially interested in. It is/was real. Not in that I want to be Andrew but real in that I find, I am no longer Abigail. Real in exposing the mechanism and force in simple objects, language and in my orientation to space.

This auto-ethnographic work reflects on the desire to understand gender beyond discourse. Engaging instead with the physical/material conditions under which gender is manifested. Filmed over 9 months in my apartment it forms part of a larger research project titled, Andrew has his period. (Anecdotes of Androgyny). The footage depicts the domestic sphere of Abigail and Andrew, versions of myself performing normative gender identities. In this isolated sphere there is a tension in the understanding of gender as a personal individual choice or part of a wider social narrative. There is a desire to blur.