
Self

Howl If You're Horny, a student dissertation film, explores queerness and mise en scene with a metaphorical relationship between being trapped within the closet and the werewolf exterior. Queer suppression and desire is explored within a dream sequence where posters, which were once in his room, come alive. He must decide if he wants to keep surviving or to live his first day as a human.

Billy, a queer college student and hopeless romantic, gets swept into what seems like a romantic connection with a kind man. From a light and cheesy beginning, Billy gradually confronts the pain of unreciprocated feelings and blurred boundaries. In the end, he learns that love does not have to come from romance to be real — and that, for now, choosing himself is enough.

Created in response to a traumatic hate crime, artist, Venus Patel, explores her emotional journey through several archetypes, each of whom perform with an egg. Using the weapon of the assailant, the egg itself becomes a tool with many psychological and symbolic meanings within it. The power of reincarnation, birth, nature, hope while also pointing to the power it has to utterly humiliate and embarrass if used in a certain way. There is an embrace of the absurdity of these performances while still speaking to the deeper subject matter. By placing the outlandish characters into public spaces, they confront a preconceived notion of pushing true queer expression into only hidden spaces or only at night, into the daylight and into the normal everyday experience.