Bom Bom’s Dream | LEFFEST - Lisboa Film Festival

Created in collaboration with Jeremy Deller, Bom Bom’s Dream follows the fantastic adventures of Japanese dancer Bom Bom as she travels to Jamaica to compete in a local dancehall contest. A children’s book illustrator by trade, Bom Bom lives a fantasy life when she’s in Jamaica. The video features extremely raw footage of Bom Bom and her dancehall opponents rolling around in the dusty yard of a shopping center as Bombom, with her gymnastic moves out-dances the competition to come out on top. Her prize? An electric fan. This piece is a surreal highlight from Hayward Gallery’s off-site exhibition The Infinite Mixmade in collaboration with The Vinyl Factory.

Duration: 13
Production year: 2016
Country: Jamaica, United Kingdom
Subtitles: English

Cecilia Bengolea

Born in Buenos Aires, Cecilia Bengolea studied urban dance styles before she began researching Anthropological Dance, Philosophy and Art History at the University of Buenos Aires. In 2001, she moved to Paris and took part in the experimental dance curriculum Ex.e.r.c.e. led by Mathilde Monnier in Montpellier. Inspired in Lévi-Strauss’s memoir Tristes Tropiques, she co-directed two videos in 2011: La Beauté (tôt) vouée à se défaire with Donatien Veisman and Cri de Pilaga with Juliette Bineau. In collaboration with Jeremy Deller, Bengolea co-directed the film RythmAssPoetry (rap), commissioned by the Biennial of Lyon 2015. The second film born out of this partnership, Bombom’s Dream, was filmed in Jamaica in 2016 and commissioned by the Hayward Gallery in London and the Biennial of São Paulo. For the 2017 Biennial of Contemporary Arts in Lisbon, Bengolea presented the performance Buss Dem Head with DJ Nigga Fox at Lux/Frágil and in 2020 she took part in the Homework series, a project put forward by BoCA during the period of social confinement. A true multidisciplinary artist, Cecilia Bengolea conceives of her dance performances as “animated sculptures” and greets the fact that these shapes allow her to become “simultaneously object and subject”.