FEBRUARY 2026 --- We Will Learn To Call Ourselves New Names
**Tickets for We Will Learn To Call Ourselves New Names**
My latest film We Will Learn To Call Ourselves New Names is just finishing up it's festival run. It's final stop for now will be NFFTY 2026. I've been quite proud of this little film and how far it's gone over the past year. Over 2025 and 2026 we screened at Cadence Video Poetry Festival, Seattle Trans Underground Film Festival, South Sound Experimental Film Festival, Bow Arts Visions in the Nunnery: Biennial Gallery Festival, Nederlands Poeziefilm Festival, and now finishing off at NFFTY at the lovely SIFF Uptown Theater.
What a great humble run this film has had! At STUFF 2026 I made great new friends and screened alongside some of Trans Cinema's best. I spent four and half hours watching Louise Weard's Castration Movie Part 2 in a room full of stinky Seattle trannys, after leaving the theater I almost vomitted in a puddle because my head hurt so bad, the early evening light was beautiful outside and there was a rainbow. What better way is there to spend a day huh?
At South Sound Experimental Film Festival I took my cousins I hadn't spoken with in over half a decade out to see a film where a woman masturbates with a bag over her head for around five minutes straight. I kept looking over to them during it but could not gauge what they thought about it for the life of me. I personally thought the film was lovely if a bit slight.
I got to fulfill a lifelong dream of being featured in an official gallery show at the Bow Arts Visions in a Nunnery Biennial (even thought it was overseas and I could not afford a ticket to go lol). Not only that but I was given my first proper review by blogger David Andrews. Thank you David for your words of kindness! **Link to David's Blog**
Of course I could not make a proper post about this film without including my insane amount of graditude for the Cadence Video Poetry Festival, who took me in with grace and kindness and were instrumental in the creation of this film (I produced it during an amazing workshop they held in Spring 2025!). The team at Cadence and the artists I worked with during the creation of We Will Learn are just truly the best of the best!
Now finally at NFFTY 2026 I return home to one my earliest film dreams and supporters, the wonderful NFFTY Youth Film Festival. Back when I was a kid I used to think about NFFTY all the time. Growing up making films with my friends in school, NFFTY felt like the peak of stardom and success. If your film made it to NFFTY, that meant you were destined for Kubrick level greatness. Fat chance little Emery! If only you knew! This will be the third time I have screened at NFFTY and the final as I am now an old hag that has to move on with her life. But I still feel the excitement and sacredness associated with the event that I felt when I was a kid. I guess you never really get over some things huh?
The first time I went to NFFTY I wore my nicest suit and got viciously drunk with hotshot filmmakers at a party I was far too young to be at. My friends' mom made everyone pizza and me and my high school friends were the only people who took her up on it. The final time I go I will wear a nice dress and then get viciously drunk with the wonderful fags of Capitol Hill and maybe kiss them too if I am so lucky. All this is to say that I can't help but feel as though this screening is intensely meaningful to me. My life has ended up so different from what I expected it to be like when I was a kid, it took a long time to learn how to deal with that. I'm still learning it now, but the humble success of We Will Learn has given me access into new possibilities for my career, my art, and my life. I am honored to end this run at this particularly special festival, celebrating old dreams while looking forward to new ones. NFFTY forever!~