Art With Teeth Film Festival spotlights femme, queer filmmakers in San Diego

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San Diego has a brand-new film festival called Art With Teeth. The one-night event spotlights emerging femme and queer filmmakers and takes place Monday at Queen Bee’s Art and Cultural Center in North Park.

Meeting Fiona Louise of Subwaygoblins Micro Studio and Devyn Nace gives me hope about the next generation of femme filmmakers. They weren’t happy with what the San Diego film scene was offering them, so they responded by creating Art With Teeth, a self-funded, community-driven festival built outside traditional industry gatekeeping and dedicated to radically femme storytelling.

“We just wanted to make something that was on our own terms,” Nace said. “I think, thought-provoking, something weird, something that makes people a little uncomfortable.”

“We’re definitely girls who bite back, so does our art, naturally,” Fiona Louise added.

That’s an attitude I fully support. Fiona Louise’s website makes clear what her mission is: to make trouble, and the festival she cofounded with Nace is all about making good trouble.

“We wanted to create a space for community, something very inclusive compared to other film festivals,” Fiona Louise explained. “So we didn’t have a very specific type of film we were looking for. We really wanted to represent the voices who haven’t had the opportunity yet due to being a minority. So I think with our five films, all of the creators are either female or queer. And I think when working with art, and you are queer or you are a woman, it is inherently political.”

The festival features the work of five femme filmmakers, a drag queen MC, drinks and conversation. Both Fiona Louise and Nace are polishing their own films for the festival.

“My film, ‘Tehran Lights and Hollywood Nights,’ is a documentary about an immigrant filmmaker who started the first Persian American television station in Los Angeles, and he just so happens to be my grandpa,” Nace explained.

Fiona Louise will be screening her film, “Carpe Noctem.”

“It is a camp horror mockumentary about a supernatural band breaking up in their last final interview,” she said. “It’s chaotic, it’s unhinged, it’s fantastic, in my opinion.”

That confidence is also fueling the ambitious duo’s determination to make the festival an annual event that’s about more than just film.

“In the world we are living in right now, femme rights and queer rights are being attacked, and we need to be celebrating our joys and our triumphs right now, and this is one night of celebration,” Fiona Louise said.

You can join the celebration on Monday. As part of the festival’s grassroots campaign, Fiona Louise has pledged to shave her head on TikTok if the event sells out.