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At 19, Alice Maio Mackay has made four films and is hard at work on her fifth.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Rhett Wyman<\/cite><\/p>\n Maio Mackay had been focused on music at school but switched her sights to cinema, leaving to pursue that ambition.<\/p>\n \u201cThey were really supportive,\u201d she says of the school. So much so that she shot her sophomore film, \u201csapphic witchy\u201d slasher Bad Girl Boogey<\/em>, there too. \u201cThey actually asked me to come and talk to the students last year.\u201d<\/p>\n Bad Girl Boogey<\/em>, co-written with regular collaborator Benjamin Pahl Robinson, was shot in January 2022. Third feature T Blockers<\/em> \u2013 depicting a town plagued by body-snatching transphobic parasites \u2013 followed in July and deliriously demonic Satranic Panic<\/em> in December. The latter two sit side by side in this year\u2019s Melbourne Queer Film Festival (MQFF) program.<\/p>\n T Blockers<\/em> casts trans actor Lauren Last as a filmmaker, Sophie, who fights back against the parasitic invasion, but the similarities to Maio Mackay are skin deep.<\/p>\n \u201cLike any of my films, there are bits of me in there and there\u2019s certainly things I\u2019ve experienced, but these are fictional characters.\u201d<\/p>\n The film was shot on a micro-budget of $10,000, much of it crowdsourced. \u201cNo one was going to fund a film called T Blockers<\/em> or Satranic Panic<\/em> in this current climate, so I just had to make it myself,\u201d Maio Mackay says.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a village supporting her. RuPaul\u2019s Drag Race Down Under<\/em> star Etcetera Etcetera cameos in a Tales from the Crypt<\/em>-like narrator role in T Blockers<\/em>. The scene was filmed at the Imperial, a renowned queer venue in Sydney, where Maio Mackay is now based. The filmmaker planned to take a breather after it was in the can. \u201cHonestly, I was like, \u2018Two films in one year is pretty crazy. That\u2019s kind of enough.\u2019\u201d But housemate Cassie Hamilton, also a writer, had other ideas.<\/p>\n T Blockers tells the story of a town plagued by body-snatching transphobic parasites.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Alice Maio Mackay<\/cite><\/p>\n \u201cShe gave me a few pages [of what would become Satranic Panic<\/em>] for my birthday in August of last year and then we wrote that script pretty quickly,\u201d Maio Mackay says. \u201cShe has a full-time job working at Griffin Theatre Company, but she had time off in December, so I was like, \u2018Why don\u2019t we just do it then?\u2019 It was a hectic year.\u201d<\/p>\n A busy but fruitful year. So Vam<\/em> was acquired by specialist horror streaming service Shudder. Maio Mackay was invited to this year\u2019s LA Outfest alongside Down Low<\/em> star Zachary Quinto and fellow trans woman and filmmaker Vera Drew, whose queering of the superhero genre, The People\u2019s Joker,<\/em> also screens at this year\u2019s MQFF. \u201cThat was crazy,\u201d she says. \u201cI was really shocked that I got that acceptance email.\u201d<\/p>\n At the festival, Maio Mackay was awarded the emerging talent award. She hadn\u2019t even planned on attending the ceremony until it was strongly suggested she should. \u201cI thought maybe they just want me there because Vera was going to win,\u201d she says of her good friend Drew, who was nominated for an Emmy for her work on Sacha Baron Cohen\u2019s sketch series Who Is America?<\/em> Drew is currently editing Maio Mackay\u2019s fast-approaching fifth feature, Carnage at Christmas<\/em>.<\/p>\n A still from Satranic Panic.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Alice Maio Mackay<\/cite><\/p>\n It\u2019s a dream come true for Maio Mackay, who grew up loving TV shows The Munsters<\/em> and Buffy the Vampire Slayer<\/em>. On the big screen, it\u2019s New Queer Cinema hero Gregg Araki\u2019s career she considers \u201cthe pinnacle of cinema\u201d, sporting a tattoo inspired by his 1995 classic, The Doom Generation.<\/em> \u201cI grew up with his films, too young probably, but they inspire me more than any horror film, with his combination of colourful queer filmmaking with weird alien shit and apocalypse stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s important to Maio Mackay, still only 19, that she works with a predominantly queer and gender-diverse cast and crew on all her movies. \u201cFilm is my life. It\u2019s my full-time job, so to get these opportunities to be surrounded by queer, trans people and allies making art that resonates with us, when that isn\u2019t the norm in this industry, is a really beautiful thing.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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