ABOUT
Film and Fishnets is the brainchild of writer-filmmaker-performance artist Danica Anna Uskert. Originally conceived in an NYU dorm room in 2002, during a particularly bad bout of depression, F&F was first a series—a sexy, subversive take on the late night creature feature program. My then boyfriend DJ Lovering, a film major, would sit by my bedside and sing me “The Rainbow Connection” after my suicide attempts, and calm me down by watching and talking about other genre films we loved. When the pills wore off, I’d have fever dreams about a Meet the Feebles meets Elvira-style puppet-burlesque-vaudeville-movie review-revue centered around an aging horror hostess (me) who was bad at her job. I spent countless nights at Bobst Library, penning scripts and sketching characters until 3am, when I’d stumble back to my dorm. I really believed in the project. I’d hoped to merge all the budding talent I’d met across Tisch and bridge the gap between the cinema studies department (my department) and the film program (DJ’s field of study) with this endeavor, but at the time, I just didn’t have the the funding. Or the tits. Also, my depression took a turn for the worse, and I eventually left that school and all the friends involved with this initial iteration of F&F.
As time passed, I attended other universities, and met other wildly talented writers. My focus, for a while, was intersectionality, and F&F became a website hosting post-feminist, post-colonial, pop-cultural theory and showcasing the work of other female filmmakers, theorists, performers, and artists.
From that, F&F evolved into a production company and webzine seeking to collaborate with all artists, especially those interested in creating and writing about sensual, seductive sinema. F&F’s goal is to explore themes and characters not typically depicted on screen, portraying "deviant" sexuality and lifestyles with love, honesty, and humor.
For several years the company was co-run by me and my now estranged husband Caleb Quinn. That iteration of it disbanded for two reasons: disagreements over our feature length film, RAW NERVES, as well as a highly public affair with actor Galen Howard. The dissolution of my marriage and the affair are both documented in the graphic novel UNSUSTAINABLE, now on display at the “Decriminalised Futures” show at ICA LONDON.
F&F releases music video collaborations and tributes to favorite artists/films/etc. on a regular basis, and is slowly rolling out episodes of an interview series in which we get up close and personal with our favorite indie actors & filmmakers. We've screened work at VAULT Film Festival (London), PFF Berlin, PFF Vienna, Festival of the Moving Image (SF), ATA (SF), the Center for Sex & Culture (SF), Ludwig (Berlin), innumerable times at SFSU and CCSF, and other local venues & outlets such as "Frank Moore's Unlimited Possibilities on BTV" (Berkeley).
Danica also writes for other production companies & websites, and collaborates with Bay Area, LA, and NYC-based artists.
Most recently, she served as a co-executive producer on queer Filipino-American filmmaker HP Mendoza's feature-length film "Bitter Melon," which was the centerpiece film of CAAMFest 2018, and also screened at OutfestLA & the Asian American Int'l Film Festival in New York. BITTER MELON had a limited theatrical run in LA/NY/SF from December 7, 2018-December 13, 2018 and is now available on DVD, Blu-ray, and on various streaming services. For more information, visit: www.bittermelonfilm.com.
Danica is also an associate producer on queer Asian-American filmmaker/critic Kyle Turner's short "Some Body" and an associate producer on the upcoming Catherine Coulson documentary, I KNOW CATHERINE. She is always interested in helping other women and LGBTQIA POC produce their work, so if you have an idea that needs funding, don't be afraid to pitch her on IG.
In addition to her writing and filmmaking talents, Danica is a costume designer, a puppet-maker and puppeteer, an animator, and has training in special effects and effects makeup for film/video, basic soldering and robotics, film theory, photography, and videography. She is a multidisciplinary performance artist, a total sweetheart, a former sex worker, an NYU Tisch School of the Arts cinema studies drop out, and a graduate of the cinema program at San Francisco State University.
Lastly... Danica's aware of that reddit thread & knows people have referred to her as "Asian Winehouse" and have been talking shit about her features and body type. To be clear, she's mixed-race Eurasian (Filipina-Indian-Chinese-Spanish-Slovak) and most often identifies as a disabled, pansexual, polyamorous Asian American hapa. Most of all though, she's a video artist.
