“With Teeth allows filmmakers the chance to experiment, for trial & error - the fund isn’t necessarily results-driven, but instead an opportunity. If something doesn’t quite work, that’s creativity as a process, and we believe this is the way to get the best out of artists as they develop their identities and practice.” - Sarah Chorley, Festival Director
In 2016, we launched a new commissioning fund for moving image work supported by Arts Council England National Lottery Funding, With Teeth. Our ethos: platforming the artist’s vision, of nurturing it to full realisation, without creative restriction and with the support to take risks.
In 2017, we opened our inaugural With Teeth open call, receiving 200 submissions, longlisting 12 projects and commissioning Kim Noce, Tash Tung and Zoe Aiano as our final three to make works on the theme ‘possession.’
We’re now especially proud to premiere the final films, until now only seen by a mere handful at our live premiere during this January’s LSFF.
“For my father, who became my mother.”
Your Mothers Are Mine!, dir. Kim Noce
A deeply personal, beautifully realised animation exploring the complexities of the mother-daughter relationship. Noce’s unique, surrealist style literalises the bond between women as umbilical cord - broken at birth but always weaving, knotting and unwinding, infinite in length and strength as we watch her strokes stretch themselves to tearing and their ends curling back to one another.
“attractive young woman dancing outdoors on a blue sky background slow motion shot at 240 fps”
Unknown Pleasure, dir. Tash Tung
A multi-screen fiction dissecting the multiplicities of women’s image. Through two simultaneous streams of visual, ebbing and flowing out of sync, the rhythms of female domesticity jar against the rhythms of slowed stock footage, the churn of radar towers and YouTube video, flitting between Akerman-esque kitchen and the throng of the world outside it. Starring Natalie Sharp (Lone Taxidermist).
“It’s easy with the living, but hard with the dead.”
Imam Pesmu (I Have A Song To Sing You), dir. Zoe Aiano
A textural, ethnographic portrait of Serbian-Vlach woman, Ivanka, who communicated with the dead through ritualistic trance. Filmed on location in Topolnica, Eastern Serbia, Aiano’s camera drifts between archive footage gifted to her by a local ethnographer and the present, meandering into the corners of Topolnica’s rurality and Ivanka’s home as into her visions, to capture a palpable essence of Ivanka’s possessions.
We’re expecting the next With Teeth open call to launch late summer 2018, and be sure to follow us on @withteethfund to be first in the know.