Five Nights of Feminist Horror at Hyperreal
This October, the invasion is spreading.
INVASIVE SPECIES 2 is a month-long series of exhibitions, screenings and programming built by a network of more than 25 women artists, writers, filmmakers and cultural workers across Texas and beyond. Curated and led by Alexis Hunter, it opens October 9 at Future Front in East Austin and runs through October 31, then spills out of the gallery into literature with Host Publications and into the cinema with Hyperreal Film Club.
That is where we come in. Austin School of Film is bringing the series into the cinema and the classroom: Feminist Horror Week, five nights of horror at Hyperreal curated by our Executive Director Faiza Kracheni; a visit from Mexican multidisciplinary artist Ana Armengod, who screens her work, joins Faiza in conversation and visits our Avant-Garde class; and the premiere of Faiza’s new Super 8 film If I Die.
Here is everything happening, where to find it, and why it matters to us.
✦ The exhibition
INVASIVE SPECIES 2
October 9 to 31, 2026 · East Austin
A multidisciplinary exhibition and series of programming curated and led by Alexis Hunter.
- 25+ women artists, writers, filmmakers and cultural workers across Central and Southeast Texas and beyond
- The first edition (2023) was named one of Glasstire’s Top 5 exhibitions to see in Texas
- This edition moves into literature and cinema with Host Publications and Hyperreal Film Club
✦ Five nights in the dark
Feminist Horror Week at Hyperreal Film Club
For one week, October 12 to 16, INVASIVE SPECIES 2 takes over Hyperreal Film Club. Curated by Faiza Kracheni with support from Cynthia Muñoz and Alexis Hunter, five nights of cult classics, new features, experimental films, and local shorts move between queer desire, monstrous bodies, horny poltergeists, power reclamation, and shining fangs in the shadows.
General admission $8 to $15, pay what you can · 301 Chicon St, Suite A
✦ All week long
The Invader
Something has entered the bar. A special Feminist Horror Week cocktail, available all week.
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MON 10.12
Sealed With a Kiss
Presented by Alexis Hunter & Faiza Kracheni
- Vexed directed by Cassandra Quintela
- Jennifer’s Body written by Diablo Cody, directed by Karyn Kusama
A sprinkle of witchcraft, a dash of queer yearning, and a kiss that changes everything. Cassandra Quintela’s queer supernatural comedy short opens the week, then Diablo Cody and Karyn Kusama’s cult classic about a possessed cheerleader who turns the tables on the boys who prey on her.
Doors 7:00 · Films 7:30
★ Get tickets -
TUE 10.13
It’s in the Shadows
Presented by Cynthia Muñoz
- Mold directed by Ramiyah Nevaeh Brooks
- A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night directed by Ana Lily Amirpour
A little mold, a lonely vampire, and something lurking just beyond the light. Two films about what happens when something unfamiliar takes hold, including Amirpour’s hypnotic vampire tale set in the Iranian ghost town of Bad City.
Doors 7:00 · Films 7:30
★ Get tickets -
WED 10.14
It’s Taking Root With Ana
Presented by Faiza Kracheni & Ana Armengod
- A collection of short films by Ana Armengod
- Huesera: The Bone Woman directed by Michelle Garza Cervera, in collaboration with Cinema de la Cultura
Identity, belonging, displacement, and the body. Ana Armengod’s experimental shorts and a conversation with Ana and Faiza, then Huesera, where a pregnant furniture maker unravels as domestic expectations and supernatural forces collide.
All drink proceeds go to the Refugee Collective in Elgin, Texas, to help replace the refrigerator at their farm.
Doors 7:00 · Films 7:30
★ Get tickets -
THU 10.15
Death Angels With Ana
Presented by Faiza Kracheni & Emily Basma
- Meshes of the Afternoon Maya Deren, 1943
- A Horse Is Not a Metaphor Barbara Hammer, 2008
- Se Prendió Candela Ana Armengod
- Seeds Emily Basma
- If I Die Faiza Kracheni, premiere
Experimental films about life, death, desire, and what the body knows. Foundational works by Maya Deren and Barbara Hammer meet contemporary analog work by women filmmakers Emily Basma, Faiza Kracheni, and Ana Armengod, including the premiere of If I Die.
8:45 to 10 PM · Free · RSVP required
Women in Arts Community Mixer
A free mixer for women, femme, and nonbinary artists and arts workers, with Austin arts organizations on hand to share resources and ways to get involved.
Content warning: this program includes films about death, illness, and suicide, including depictions of self-immolation. Please feel free to step out if you need a break.
Doors 7:00 · Films 7:30
★ Get tickets -
FRI 10.16
Home Invasion
Presented by Alexis Hunter & Faiza Kracheni
- Our First Haunted Home directed by Elizabeth Mims
- Teeth written and directed by Mitchell Lichtenstein
The closing night brings horror into the home and the body itself: a haunted domestic comedy, then Teeth, the darkly comic story of bodily autonomy filmed in and around Austin. The invasion comes home and bites back.
Doors 7:00 · Films 7:30
★ Get tickets
✦ About the curator
Meet Faiza Kracheni
Faiza Kracheni (she/her, b. 1988) is a Mexican and North African/Berber American media artist, musician, educator, and arts advocate born and raised in East Austin, Texas. A self-taught artist, she draws on her multicultural heritage through a practice that brings together non-narrative analog film, new media, and sound.
Her work spans experimental films, large-scale installations, and music videos for artists including Young Guv, Vosh, Mujeres Podridas, Holy Wire, and Single Lash. Her films and installations have been presented internationally, including in Braga, Portugal; Košice, Slovakia; Toronto, Canada; and at SXSW in Austin. A touring musician for nearly two decades, Kracheni has performed across the globe. Currently, she is one half of the electronic duo FLESH OF MORNING, combining analog techniques with atmospheric soundscapes in electronic production and live performance.
Kracheni also serves as Executive Director of Motion Media Arts Center and teaches at Austin School of Film, expanding access to media arts education, creative space, and resources for artists. She developed CINEMAKER, a studio access program launched in 2014 that supports more than 100 members. Her cultural advocacy includes service on the City of Austin Arts Commission, UNESCO Creative Cities, and the SXSW EDU Film Board, alongside her role as one of the co-founders of the Govalle Cultural District.
✦ On Thursday, October 15, Faiza premieres her new Super 8 film If I Die. Shot over three months of travel this summer and crafted as a film diary documentary with original writing, it is a reflection on mortality that followed six months of intense sickness and chemotherapy, after a cancer diagnosis in 2025 and the discovery of a BRCA2 genetic mutation. BRCA2 is a gene that normally helps the body repair damaged DNA; an inherited mutation in it greatly raises the risk of breast, ovarian and other cancers.
This new work also lives as an installation: paired with large-scale fabric cyanotypes, it becomes a living, breathing archive Faiza calls “a funeral of who I was,” a way of coming to terms with death and mourning memories before they happen.
✦ About the programming team
With support from
Cynthia Muñoz
Cynthia Muñoz was born and raised in Austin, Texas. She holds a BA in Studio Art and English Literature from Brandeis University, and her work has been shown in Austin, Philadelphia, Boston, New York City, and Seattle. Under the name Cindy Popp, she creates visual art inspired by fashion editorials, B movies, and clowns. She is a Program Manager for The Allstate Foundation, serves on the programming team at Hyperreal Film Club, and is a Board Chair of the Museum of Human Achievement and We Luv Video. She lives on the east side with her partner and cat, where they watch movies nearly every day.
Alexis Hunter is a multidisciplinary artist, curator, and educator based in Austin, Texas. She is the curator and lead artist of INVASIVE SPECIES 2 and joins the Feminist Horror Week programming team to bring the project’s invasion into the world of cinema. Her work explores identity, the body, and belonging through a range of artistic and participatory practices. Hunter was named Austin Chronicle’s Best Visual Artist of 2023, and her curatorial project INVASIVE SPECIES was recognized by Glasstire as one of the Top 5 exhibitions to see in Texas. She can be found painting in her studio, splashing around with her Swim Club at Barton Springs, or hosting events like Big Bad Karaoke: BIGGER AND BADDER in Texas alongside Future Front Texas’ founding director, Jane Claire Hervey, as a part of Fusebox Festival.
✦ Visiting artist
Meet Ana Armengod
Originally from Mazatlán, Sinaloa, and now based in Philadelphia, Ana Armengod is a Mexican multidisciplinary artist working in Super 8, sculpture, illustration, writing and sound. Her work gives weight to the overlooked: nature, death, memory and the details lost in bigger stories.
A 2024 MacDowell Fellow, Ana has shown at the Brooklyn Museum’s Immigrant Artist Biennial, shot Se Prendió Candela on Super 8 in Cuba, and just made Oil Slicked, a new 8mm film shot in Vietnam. This October she comes to Austin for two nights of her work at Hyperreal, a conversation with Faiza Kracheni, and a visit to our Avant-Garde class.
As she put it during her 2024 MacDowell residency:
“I’m an avant-garde filmmaker; when thinking of art that speaks about immigration, folks tend to think of bright, colorful banners with monarch butterflies, which are meant to inspire us to break these borders and be free. That is not me.”
ANA ARMENGOD
Recent highlights
- 2026: Oil Slicked, a new film shot on 8mm in Vietnam; ABC de Fuego, an exhibition co-curated with Persons Unknown in Los Angeles; a screening at Sleazy Femme Film Fest at Whammy! Micro-Cinema
- 2025 to 2026: The Weight of Mountains residency and film symposium in Ho Chi Minh City
- 2025: Candela at Persons Unknown, Los Angeles; Illuminate the Arts Grant recipient
- 2024: MacDowell Fellowship; Se Prendió Candela, a Super 8 film shot in San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba; her book 17 Years of Slumber, launched and published by Fine Editions NYC
- 2023: Immigrant Artist Biennial at the Brooklyn Museum
- 2022 to 2023: Exposure Fellowship from The Pittsburgh Foundation
✦ In the classroom
Film as a living, tactile material
On Tuesday, October 13, Ana joins our 8-week Avant-Garde & Experimental Filmmaking class as visiting artist, sharing new work and talking with students about her practice.
The class treats motion picture film as a living, tactile material. Over eight weeks, students shoot it, scratch and manipulate it, cut it by hand and transform it into something new. Guided by the avant-garde lineage from Man Ray to Stan Brakhage, it is film as art, and every student leaves with a finished experimental short of their own.
Experimental film has always lived in the in-between, moving between the gallery and the film world. Bringing working artists like Ana into the room is how we keep that conversation alive at a community film school.
Avant-Garde & Experimental Filmmaking returns Spring 2027. Watch motionmediaarts.org for registration.
✦ Join us
See you in the dark
- Exhibition
- INVASIVE SPECIES 2, October 9 to 31, Future Front
- Screenings
- Feminist Horror Week, October 12 to 16, Hyperreal Film Club, 301 Chicon St, Suite A
- Times
- Doors 7:00 pm, films 7:30 pm
- Tickets
- $8 to $15, pay what you can
- Mixer
- Thursday, October 15, 8:45 to 10 pm, free, RSVP required
About Hyperreal Film Club
Hyperreal Film Club is a nonprofit community cinema and local film hub based in Austin, Texas. In 2016, founders David, Jenni, and Tanner started popping up in dozens of Austin’s most iconic locations to bring audiences their favorite entries in cult, genre, arthouse, and independent cinema, always paired with one or more short films showcasing Austin’s thriving local scene.
In August 2024, Hyperreal put down roots at 301 Chicon St., a clubhouse where they show the world’s best movies Monday through Friday. Sliding-scale tickets, popcorn, cold beverages, and all your hot and rowdy friends make this the movie-watching experience of your dreams.
About Austin School of Film
Austin School of Film (ASOF) is Texas’s longest-running community film school and a program of Motion Media Arts Center, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. ASOF focuses on independent, experimental, and radically inclusive filmmaking that democratizes access and challenges the Hollywood narrative about who gets to make images.
Its rotating roster of 100+ hands-on classes a year is led by filmmakers, film artists, archivists, and animators, from indie production to non-narrative and motion picture film. Beginners are always welcome. No prerequisites, no pretension.