An ex-soldier struggling with civilian life. A paramedic decompressing after a long shift. A drifter haunted by a family tragedy. It’s at the fringes of society that the really interesting stories hide, according to directing duo Luke & Joseph, whose thought-provoking, award-winning work spans commercials, features, documentaries and art installations. Recently signed to Unit9, the directing duo talk to 1.4 about their ‘healthy obsession’ with characters and the melancholy of London by night.

Tired of narrow perspectives, inauthentic narratives and the absence, on screen, of people who looked like him, filmmaker Abdou Cissé decided to take control of his own story as a young black man from inner city London. Whether he’s interrogating modern masculinity in Serious Tingz, or taking aim at systemic racism and white accountability in his latest short for Channel 4, Damage Control, his work is by turns fresh, funny, raw and true; underpinned by the theme of ‘habits and contradictions’ – our acceptance of the status quo, even if it contradicts its purpose. He tells 1.4 about his love for short form film, and why black people are not a monolith.

An eye-bleeding concoction of retro video games, shot-on-iPhone, 3D animation and millennial meme culture, the madly creative music videos of Superorganism have arguably played as big a part as their earworm-y songs in propelling the eight-part indie-pop act to international stardom. Failed pro-guitarist and self-proclaimed ‘massive nerd’, Robert Strange, is the man behind the mash-ups, and he’s having a better 2020 than most: having traded the band house for a ‘pink retro dreamland’, he’s signed to Blinkink and branched out with spots for IKEA, adidas and a new promo for Tinie Tempah - complete with canine cameo. He tells 1.4 about copyright nightmares and why his next move might be writing post-prequel Star Wars fanfiction.

Hail Storms and Hail Marys for festive times, Megaforce's magical formula of larger than life grandeur grounded in the reality of human experience - in this case, friendship in the face of adversity - has Burberry singing in the rain. 

As a child, the horror and sci-fi aisles of his local Blockbuster were a place of pilgrimage for Australian director James Chappell – with the legacy of that filmic education reflected today in his brand of ‘shock and awe’ filmmaking. Under Chappell’s cinematic gaze, mundane spaces like supermarkets turn into temples of terror, and anti-heroes emerge like grotesque, charred phoenixes from flaming cars. Presenting a dystopian vision of future London in his video-game inspired promo, Legion, he talks to 1.4 about finding humour alongside the horror and his plans for a fishy feature.

Growing up in a family where books and art were more prevalent than tv, music videos weren’t a great influence on director Sing J. Lee. So it seems only natural that the LA-based director writes and creates multi-layered short-films to accompany entire albums. Following his earlier work, Sailor, for Indonesian artist Rich Brian, Sing’s latest meta-film for The Killers’ Imploding the Mirage blurs the lines between fictional life and reality. The director talks with1.4 about his creative processes for both mini-movies using the complete album as a soundtrack.

As a captive polar bear plunges into a pool, a hunter raises her gun and fires. Displayed as a diptych in Camille Summers-Valli’s latest project, Swim Hunt Run, the two scenes perfectly reflect the theme at the heart of the director’s work: our broken connection with the natural world. Growing up in Nepal, she witnessed first-hand the ‘rapid westernisation’ of a developing nation; later, she worked as a sheep-herder in Navajo Nation, Arizona, documenting the struggles of the Native Americans against resource extraction. An instinctive filmmaker, she tells 1.4 why she hasn’t followed in her father’s documentarian footsteps and how different geographic spaces generate different experiences.

The final deadline to submit your entries to the 1.4 Awards of Brilliant Filmmaking is almost here: this Friday, November 6th. You can beg and cry but there are no more extensions. We have to get your fabulous short films, music videos, animation, and commercials in front of our international jury made up of these leading commissioners of directing talent. Just take a look who will be viewing your work…and selecting the very best to go into our online 1.4 Awards Annual of the world’s hottest directors

Good morning Monday, yes the world is still here. The day before Terrifying Tuesday when the USA counts its election votes we bring you an ad that spells out the truth of the incumbent boss of America

Growing up with a Motown-loving mum and a dad who idolised Dylan, music was always central to Libby Burke Wilde’s life. So for this Lancashire lass, picking up a camera to document her favourite bands was a natural segue into the world of photography and directing. But lately, she’s found true north with a more narrative approach, training her lens on social injustices like period poverty and families living below the breadline. She tells 1.4 about the deep responsibility she feels as a filmmaker and what her sixteen-year-old self would make of it all.

And a few song and dances to kick off the week in these turbulent times

Being locked-in during lockdown has unleashed director Keith Schofield's unbounded creativity to new heights and new depths of interesting depravity. This animated trip with cameo appearances from the likes of Bruce Willis, Daniel Craig and Morgan Freeman is one most definitely not to watch with your kids around.

From tough beginnings in a down-at-heel Paris suburb, dreading the bailiff’s knock, childhood pals Kevin and Loïc – aka Original Kids – have risen to success in their native France with music videos for the likes of Therapie Taxi, Oxmo Puccino and Georgio. Happy to bend the rules in their quest to ‘take the viewer somewhere unexpected’, their diverse brand of storytelling ranges from a tenderly observed docu-short to kicking misogyny’s butt in an enjoyably schlocky promo. They tell 1.4 how strong women and shared values have shaped their approach  

There’s an out-of-town freshness to the work of Grandmas, a pair of Mancunian directors who find rich inspiration in the post-industrial towns of the northwest. Whether it’s a skinhead breaking into interpretative dance at a working men’s social club, or an all-female bodybuilding competition at a grotty seaside town, their music videos for Pearl City, Larkins and Hurts show how far the duo have come since their early days of ‘pissing about with cameras’, while their award-winning short, Norteños, is an exercise in finding black comedy in the bleakest of situations. They tell 1.4 about making a ‘dance piece’ that’s not a dance piece, and how they blew the budget on a bucking bronco

Director and photographer Paul Ward turned the trials of his covid-enforced break from commercials work into creating this no-budget, yet stunning music video for South African artist PHFAT. We talk with the Cape Town and sometimes Berlin-based director about the importance of introspection when the going gets tough and learning how to steer his own ship rather than being taken by the tides

It’s not that common for Chinese-Khmer to speak fluent French, but when Lo Xu-Ming Tong from Montreal and Parisian Alexandre Do met at London’s Central Saint Martins art school they discovered they also shared the same Teochew dialect from their Chinese ancestry. Now the duo have teamed up to explore their mutual Cambodian heritage in this short film about a young construction worker running away into the night with a mysterious suitcase that everyone covets

Directing isn’t always about being hands-on: sometimes, it’s having a lighter touch, letting the performers breathe and the story tell itself. Rising South African talent Emilie Badenhorst is a case in point: having won plaudits for her tender, delicate portrayal of a girl struggling to come to terms with her heritage in Lolo Zouai’s Desert Rose, she is now set to explore “the moments of intimacy and love” that grow between South Africa’s LGBTQIA+ communities and Afrikaner culture in a new short film, ekstasis. Following her signing to Couscous, she talks to 1.4 about her “inside-out, immersive and together” approach to filmmaking.    

Timed to launch around London’s annual Notting Hill Carnival, the Create Not Hate initiative led by Trevor Robinson OBE at Quiet Storm offers an inspiring and overdue route into the creative industries for diverse members of BAME communities. Partnering with a cohort of youth and educational organizations, Create Not Hate invited participants to develop messages aimed at tackling prejudice, stereotypes and bias, in the process giving access to mentorships and training around commercial production. We spoke to Trevor alongside 17 year old Camberwell student Emmanuel, who went through the mentoring program, to discuss the short films Heated Conversation and Stitches and the changes the industry needs to commit to.

‘Directing is similar to cooking,’ muses Francisco Gonzalez Sendino of his sexually-charged short, Exchange, which pays homage to famed ‘ramen Western’ Tampopo and an erotic encounter with an egg. It’s a good analogy, as the German-born director certainly brings a Michelin-starred chef’s approach to his craft. From painstakingly selecting the ingredients to tweaking the recipe and mixing it all up into something extraordinary and enticing, he has a knack for cooking up the unexpected, be it a portrait of youth in a 70-year-old ex-con, or a fashion film that has more to do with community than catwalks. He chats to 1.4 about poetic documentaries and how being ‘open to meeting anyone and going anywhere’ has got him where he is today

More known for his mathematically precise and choreographed special effects, Pablo Maestres shoots a live action narrative in the outer reaches of freezing Sweden for his latest music video

Show Felix Brady a cool bit of kit and he’ll instantly start wondering how he can use it in his next music video. And if the gear doesn’t exist – like a custom-made camera trolly that looks like a diplodocus or a ‘tattoo removing thingymabob’ – well, he’ll put his set designer background to good use and hack it. But the Stink director’s not just a geek for tech and problem-solving in a budget: his latest promo for Greentea Peng taught him the importance of emotional connection to the work. He tells 1.4 about accidentally falling in love with motion control, extinct Hawaiian birds and why a glass of orange juice propelled him into directing

How do you go about introducing a director whose work, which spans more than a decade, can only really be described as ontological, and even then there’s something not quite all encompassing enough about that term? Martin de Thurah is an artist and polymath. Yes, his primary medium is film, but it could be said that his output more closely resembles a unique form of visual psychoanalysis. At his freest, de Thurah explores lines between conscious perception and our unconscious minds, the tensions that exist between nature and culture, and in that regard there is almost a mythological dimension to his unearthing of these themes. His latest project, Color Me, is an exquisitely resonant short film created in collaboration with musician Active Child. In it, de Thurah ventures into the terrain of mental health, anxiety, paranoia and psychic dissonance. Ahead of the WHO World Mental Health Day on October 10th, Stephen Whelan caught up with the Danish visionary to revisit a conversation he and de Thurah had commenced some 10 years past and find out how the passage of time had impacted the creative’s work .

Sometimes a music video connects with you in a way that leaves a lasting and indelible echo in the back of your mind. David M.Helman’s Cold Little Heart for Michael Kiwanuka from 2017 remains one of the most thoughtful reflections on the circularity of grief ever represented in a music video. Helman’s work is at once tender and angry, confused yet reconciled. Ambiguity and abstract narrative structures flow through his films, with characters that refuse to spill their guts within the restrictive time formats of short films and promos, forcing the viewer to do some of the conceptual and creative heavy lifting themselves. We caught up with Helman to discuss his latest promo for James Vincent McMorrow’s I Should Go, disillusionment and stripping away artifice.

Among the many ugly consequences of the global pandemic has been a rise in anti-Chinese sentiment, bringing micro-aggressions that have bubbled away beneath the surface for years into the mainstream. The burden of everyday racism, and the struggle to accept one’s heritage, is explored with heartbreaking authenticity in Sunny, the debut film from new filmmaking collective This Is Our Youth. We spoke to founders Ben Bainbridge and Sky Yang about supporting fresh new voices to tell their stories and the importance of making films for film’s sake

If there’s one thing that connects the work of director Taz Tron Delix it’s the process of growth. Having scooped the Best Urban Newcomer award at the 2017 MVA’s for his Oscar Worldpeace promo, Taz’s work has progressed at lightspeed both creatively and technically in its execution. Across promos for Kojey Radical and Camelphat, Taz has managed to create worlds that express two totally different sounds sitting on opposite sides of the musical divide - one a reflective musical evolution of spoken word poetry and the other a late night deep house beat. Music for thought and music to lose yourself in.  Yet across this work Taz has artfully built doorways into experiences other than our own, and it’s this idea that leads us to his new promo for Stormzy’s track Superheroes, his third collab with the artist after Audacity earlier this year, and this month’s Aint It Different for Headie One and Stormzy. Stephen Whelan sat down for a socially distanced beer with Taz to delve deeper into his world.

Daniel Wirtberg’s music video for Zebra Katz is a perfect testament to the director’s desire to explore the relationship between dynamic images, sound and music. His interpretation of lyrics lies not in the literal sense but as a foundation for theme and attitude creating visceral, atmospheric work which extends to his short films, art projects, and music pieces. We talk to the director about his creative process, growing up in deepest rural Sweden and why it’s crucial to collaborate closely with artists and commercial clients

You could call it modern surrealism, but in truth the work of director, illustrator and photographer Quentin Jones defies a label. A magpie for stylish imagery, Jones layers artwork with live action to produce complex animated collages, rich in curiosities that demand a second viewing. Having carved out a career creating lushly textured fashion films for the likes of Chanel, Kenzo and Louis Vuitton, Jones recently created an insight  into her fevered mind with It Was Fine, a still-to-be-released quarantine chronicle excavating the layers of lockdown-induced mania with wry humour and style. She tells 1.4 about early experiments with playdough stop-motion and how she’s planning to take baby steps into a more narrative world

Want to be part of the 1.4 Awards Showcase this year? Then get your ducks in a (socially distanced) row. Entries open now!!

Earthquakes, gunshots, and even cartel run favelas haven’t stopped Aussie-based, Kiwi Director Paul Nevison from telling stories. He tells 1.4 what’s driven him from the end of the earth to the ends of the earth, and how he uses the imagination as a trojan horse into the soul.

Growing up between New York’s Spanish Harlem and Puerto Rico, director Kristian Mercado Figueroa draws on his complicated heritage and outsider status to sensitively explore the Latinx narrative. A champion of the working class and minority communities, much of Figueroa’s work feels politically charged – Pa’lante addressed the devastating consequences of Hurricane Maria that went largely unreported by world media, while Mariposa explored the intergenerational journeys of women of colour – yet, at its core, he says, it’s just about ‘human experiences’. He tells 1.4 about challenging music doc formats with a visual snippet of Billie Eilish’s brain and why filmmakers should be able to destroy, not just create

Somesuch filmmaker A.V. Rockwell honed her distinctive directorial voice through hard-hitting yet poetic depictions of urban life in her native New York. Looking at themes of race, identity, mental health and systematic oppression through a fiercely original lens, her body of work includes the award-winning short Feathers and The Gospel, a collaboration with Alicia Keys. She talks to 1.4 about her messy creative process, the role of music in her unique aesthetic, and why real change starts with awareness of privilege