Birth of the Hive Queen is an artistic and experimental meditation on identity. More specifically, it’s a short film about trans identity. Writer/director Tempest Creation has a talent for creating visceral images that will likely draw a reaction from the viewer, despite the film’s non-linear structure.
The short stars Tommy Boy as Amina, a trans woman who lives alone (I think) and whose best friend seems to be a butterfly. In fact, there’s a lot of shots of Amina talking to said butterfly, and you can interpret that however you want. I’ve often associated butterflies with the idea of metamorphosis and transitioning into something colorful and beautiful. There’s something oddly poetic about the friendship between the bug and the film’s star, including the frequent shots Tempest Creation includes of the butterfly, coupled with bits of dialogue of Amina talking to it. It’s endearing how much the lead cares for this bug.
Yet, there’s also a violent undertone to the film. In one powerful sequence, Amina screams and howls in her bathroom. It’s guttural and it’s preceded by a moment where she drops fruit on the floor and its juice looks like blood, both on the floor and running down her leg.
The film also bounces back and forth in time, including one sequence in which Amina’s mother, at least I think it’s her mother, reads her a bedtime story about friendship. In fact, within nine minutes, there’s a lot of moments here that deal with the very concept of friendship, which perhaps shows Amina’s longing for connection, especially in the present.
All of that said, while some of the artsy shots work, it is a bit overdone at times. They also outweigh a more cohesive narrative. The short actually could have benefited from one or two more flashbacks to flesh out Amina’s story more.
Birth of the Hive Queen is a highly experimental short film. It isn’t concerned with traditional narrative. Rather, the images it presents and the lead performance especially create a raw exploration of identity, specifically trans identity. Tempest Creation offers an uncompromising vision here that’s rich in emotion, despite the muddled narrative.
