Kiron Hussain

We caught up with Kiron Hussain - winner of the Animate Projects Award for BestExperimental Film at this year’s London Short Film Festival - seeking enlightenmenton the inspiration behind Slick Horsing...

You're currently studying Fine Art at Newcastle - how would you describeyour art practice? Have you made any other films during your time thereor going by your artreview profile, are you more of a painter by trade?

It all plays on self contradiction. I try to create beautiful aberrations. I want theviewer's flesh to creep and heart to lift in the same moment – if you wondered whatall of the flashing is about ; I was after a sort of refreshingly disturbing experience... just too pretty to be horrific... paradoxical yes, and possibly the vaguest most pie inthe sky modus operandi in the history of film ideas, but it eventually came to besomewhere close to what I wanted.

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I come at painting and film in the same way, straight-backed and improvisational ,with the same smudgy back-of-the-brain entities goggling forth out of the dark andmanifesting themselves in my work. I just say I'm an artist and it saves thenecessity for distinctions .

So, where did the inspiration for Slick Horsing come from? Can you shedsome light on the trinity of mankind, girlkind and beastkind...

Shedding light is what I'm best at not doing – the “the trinity of schoolboy terror” isa tiny bit of poetry I used to represent childhood fears; I'll remain a purist of acertain sort by not elaborating beyond that. It's down to your interpretation.

Slick Horsing seems to me to have elements of the nightmarish lightingand colours of a David Lynch film - are there any filmmakers thatparticularly inspire you and inspired this work?

Don't get me wrong, Lynch is a near perfect creature with a gorgeously odd brain but I couldn't honestly say I was directly influenced by him... though, yes he'sinspirational and just maybe there's a small crossover artistically. I wanted to makea delicate, vivid, unusual piece of art, and consciously all I can reference as aninfluence is the flickering bulb in my bathroom.

Of course I do actively admire a great number of painters and filmakers, there areseveral in particular who have been swilling around my head these past months:the directors Ritwik Ghatak , Shuji Terayama and Alejandro Jodorowsky ... andpainters Sidney Nolan , Goya and the writer GK Chesterton .

I've also been watching a lot of Ren & Stimpy, which has compelled me to try todevelop a jarring kind of closeup called the Stimpy Cut – I suppose you'd need tosee it.

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There's a real 50s Pulp Fiction meets fashion magazine photo shoot feel tothe imagery of the film - where did you source the images for the film?

An explicit answer to that question has been smothered by hours of imagemanipulation – splicing different parts together, an eyeball here, a cuff link there –untangling the mess is beyond me. Also quite a lot of it has been hand painted, andI very much like the idea of keeping people in the dark over which parts are. Andyour comparison to the aesthetic of 50s Pulp and fashion photography – I love bothand agree entirely.

Did you create the unsettling soundtrack yourself? Or do you evercollaborate on your work?

I have a one-track mind, and Slick Horsing was my first film so there was noquestion I would revert to type and manipulate every last detail – you'll notice thecredits are just my name flashed up for three seconds .

How did you find the experience of showing your work in a film festivalsetting?

The LSFF seems to have been infiltrated by a tendril of the contemporary art scene,which reassured me I was right at home. I screened two films at two separateevents and was delirious throughout both.

What's next for you? Will there be more films in the future?

I'm working on one right now, scrabbling together the script as I go from afragmented car crash of a novella I splurged out a while back. Six months ago I waswondering whether I could even make a proper short film, now I'm wondering if I'llbe able to piece together a coherent screenplay. Not entirely sure I'd back myselfbut the result should at the very least be weird; that being the bare minimumconstant in my work; weirdness.

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