Film Festival

Women-directed horror films are finally getting the (blood) red-carpet treatment! The Viscera Film Festival, showcasing women-made horror shorts, is this Saturday, July 17th in Los Angeles. The film festival came about through the team-up of Shannon Lark, who started the Chainsaw Mafia to encourage independent filmmakers to produce (and whose email signature reads, "Never forget, if a woman can go through the process of pushing out a baby, she can make a horror film!") and Heidi Martinuzzi, a film journalist and director, and founder of Pretty-Scary.net which covered women in horror films (behind and in front of the camera). Besides the film festival, Martinuzzi and Lark are combining powers (well, websites) to make Fangirltastic.com (still under construction) to keep the spirit of Viscera alive all year-round. I asked Lark and Martinuzzi about the festival and how feminism and horror overlap.

"FEMINISTS, WE’RE CALLING YOU! PLEASE REPORT TO THE FRONT DESK!"

It’s fucking hard to be feminist. (If you just made a dick joke to yourself then get the heck outta here!) No one said negotiating power was easy, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t rock out while challenging the status-quo, being politically active and refusing to compromise your principles. Enter Le Tigre, and for fun’s sake, let’s put ‘em on tour!