Louise Weard is a filmmaker with a degree in Film Semiotics. Hailing from Western Canada, she cut her teeth working as the cinematographer for FX legend Ryan Nicholson and emerged as an exciting new voice in underground horror with her breakout body-horror featurette Computer Hearts. Along with her filmmaking partner Dionne Copland, Louise established CyberCraft Video in 2016 and produced the short films Inferno and Haxx Deadroom, as well as the micro-budget queer slasher film Cuties. After film school she produced Dionne Copland’s feature-length debut, the cabin-in-the-woods creature-feature Cold Wind Blowing, which was released in 2022. She has been obsessed with deeply personal (and perverse) movies that push the envelope for as long as she can remember, which culminated in her winning a Most Fearless Performance Award in 2015 for her short film S.I.D.S. in which she played herself as a transsexual woman seeking a back alley surgery. Nearly a decade after completing her debut film, Computer Hearts, it was rediscovered as a significant work of transgender horror cinema and screened at The Music Box in Chicago, IL during their Music Box of Horrors event in October 2022. Her film theory writing encompasses work on the on-screen semiotics of the Marquis de Sade and a comprehensive history of films featuring phallic genital trauma, the latter of which can be found in the book Divergent Terror: The Crossroads of Queerness and Horror. In September 2022, she co-hosted the 100 Best Kills event at Fantastic Fest in a night dedicated to castration scenes in film. For Louise, cinema is about illuminating the most secretive and problematic parts of the self and using storytelling to connect with other freaks and outcasts so that nobody has to feel alone. Her obsessions include ritual Magick, Gnosticism, and UFOs, and when she’s not making movies you’ll find her championing unsung visionary filmmakers through her film writing and her roles at various film festivals. She has also directed some extremely transgressive music videos for musical artists Ravine Angel and Lauren Bousfield, and while filming one she may have “accidentally” performed a ritual that made her trans.