Claws! Film FestivalA festival identity unleashing the monstrous-feminine on screen
Claws! Film Festival is a series on the Monstrous-Feminine in horror cinema, with a selection of films featuring female archetypes and subversions of the fictional monster.
My Role:
Brand and Visual Identity
Wordmark Design
Editorial Design
Based on the cinematic analysis of cultural critic Barbara Creed in The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, and Psychoanalysis, Claws! Film Festival brings together experimental screenings that examine the tropes of monstrosity in relation to the feminine experience. The program, held at the independent cinema Metrograph, brings a spotlight to the female figure imagined as the folkloric archetypes of the Vampire, the Monstrous Womb, the Witch, the Possessed Body, and the Archaic Mother.
The core of the festival’s visual direction is in the ever-present body horror of the selected films. A textured, tactile graphic system is a reference to the monstrous-feminine as a grotesque destruction of the physical body.
The bold identity calls back to the genre’s classic visual tropes without relying on tired clichés. The stereotypical hot pink is subverted by the violent gesture of the hand-drawn wordmark, reflecting the series’ visceral horror.