Izzy Perez and Emma Fuente on Their Upcoming Queer Short Film
Have you ever wondered what it’d be like to have lesbian moms? Cease your quandary. Izzy Perez and Emma Fuente have garnered hundreds of thousands of fans by posting satirical videos on TikTok where they ambiguously share bits and pieces about their relationship, do lighthearted dances, and pretend to be lesbian moms. But their newest project branches away from their traditional content and into the world of film.
The queer couple is fundraising for their short Sci-Fi film “We Seem to Feel,” which is set to be released on YouTube this summer. The film, written and directed by Perez and co-directed by Fuente, follows the journey of a closeted queer woman living in the future. She orders a robot romantic companion online and is surprised when a female automaton appears on her doorstep. Throughout the story, the protagonist is confronted with memories and aspects of her life that she has yet to come to terms with.
“We Seem to Feel” is a full-circle moment for Perez and Fuente, who met in high school biology when a mutual friend asked for their participation in a short film. Years later and nearing the end of their college years, the pair are creating their own short film with the help of an entirely queer and woman-lead crew.
“Every day, Emma and I value that our following has created opportunities for us that are immensely privileged, and with the liberty of being able to speak, we will never neglect those who have given us our voices. I’ve loved filmmaking ever since I was young, even before I knew the person I was going to be. As a queer young adult, I’ve found the courage to tell my stories, largely so that you do not feel alone,” Perez shares on the film’s fundraising page.
OFM chatted with Perez and Fuente about “We Seem to Feel.” You can support the film here.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Can you talk about your inspiration and motivation behind this film and how you tapped into your own experiences as queer people to write and create this?
Izzy: I guess at the end of the day, it’s heavily inspired by my queer experience, my experience as a queer woman, and Emma’s experience as a queer woman, and what we just have learned.
Emma: In the past, all the work I’ve done with Izzy has kind of strayed away from the subject of queerness or being queer. That’s what I noticed, just in my work, especially. And I had this class where we read this queer theorist. His name is—I’m gonna not say it, right—José Esteban Muñoz. And he really talks about how the queer archive is ephemeral, and queerness always had to be hidden, and queer people had to disguise themselves, and that’s it. There’s no physical archive, or piece of history, art pieces; it’s all just secret, I guess.
But now I feel like I’m in this kind of headspace where I want to begin to express this queerness, express myself, express my own experience. And Izzy’s thesis, working with her and developing it, thinking about our experiences together, individually, it was just such a liberating developmental process that it felt so scary, but it felt so good realizing that finally, I broke through this internal surface tension, and that I’m finally speaking about my life and speaking about me, and we’re creating the story that we don’t have to hide it. We don’t have to keep it a secret. This film, I feel like we drew a lot from our own lives, but I think it’s also just the decision to make a piece and make a film about queerness and incorporate that science fiction element of technology. It got me excited; it made me feel like I’m doing something that’s actually part of us. It was super nice to do.
What do you want people to take away from this film?
Izzy: I think I want people to feel, most importantly, entertained and that it’s a good film. That’s my biggest concern, just executing a good film. I feel so connected to it. I feel like it’s an important film, and I hope that I can get across that it’s an important film because this is the first time I’m making a film.
Emma: I just want the film as a whole to, I guess, encourage people to experiment with how they express those stories and not to be reserved in creating stuff, creating art, creating films, creating anything to make you feel like you can connect with others.
I wrote down a couple of things that people said in the film’s fundraiser discussion section. Someone said, “Thank you guys, not only for the laughs, but for the representation of real queer love in the media. The queer joy I get from these creators is priceless.” I was wondering how it makes you feel knowing that you have that impact on people.
Emma: That’s so sweet. I didn’t know that existed. I mean, messages like that, it’s incredible. I want people to see us and be like, “Yes, this is real. These are real people. And this is not a representation of what they could be, but it’s like someone else is here with me. Someone else is like me, or like I feel like I can connect with them.” That openness with us and our followers and us and our community, I feel like that is so incredible.
Were you guys expecting to get a following when you first started posting videos together?
Izzy: I doubt it. But, like, our first video ever was me dressed up as an alt teen and Emma acting like a fairy girl, and we did those characters. And then we did the skits. That actually wasn’t even what got views. I think what got views was this, like, a 50-second video of me pretending to pick up Emma in an Uber, also kind of in character.
Emma: We were just making videos because that’s what we’ve always done. This time there was this platform that we could share it with.
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So before TikTok, were you guys just making fun, random videos and just sharing them with your friends or something?
Izzy: Yeah, pretty much. We had an old YouTube channel that we made a few short films with our friends and just showed it to people in our high school, basically.
How does it feel knowing that you created these fun little videos, and now you guys are creating your first real film together?
Izzy: We always talk about it. That’s crazy, like, what are the odds that through all of life—I don’t know—it wasn’t that long ago, but I feel so detached from the person who’s making those cutesy little films. And, like, what are the odds that we came back full circle when we’re making bigger scale, more exciting stuff?
Do you plan to continue working together in the future to create films?
Izzy: I’d love to. Imagine now, with this milestone, like, 20 years from now, I’m directing a feature film, and that’s a dream. I hope so. I don’t know. I don’t know what will come. But I hope to make a film one day; I feel like a lot of film students want to be directors or at least write something. It’s definitely like a dream of mine. I like to remain optimistic and realistic.
Emma: Yeah, definitely. I think especially in the film industry, there’s like a lot of opportunities, a lot of paths you can go down, but I just feel like that, even if it’s not in the form of like a feature-length film, sharing our lives and most sharing our stories is, in itself, a way for us to tell our stories and share our experiences. And I think that’s one of the main reasons why we create and why we continue to make these films and videos.
Photo courtesy of Izzy Perez and Emma Fuente
