Director's Works
Vanbur, My Own Matt Houghton
Matthew's classwork has been of an excellent standard this term, reaching Level 2 in both Reading and Maths, and yet his progress is being hindered by his constant chatter with those around him. Having started the year extremely positively, he has become increasingly less focused on his work and more and more preoccupied with playtime.'
A Londoner of mixed British and Indian descent, Matt Houghton is an award-winning filmmaker who makes films about outsiders and the unheard. His work experiments with form, often treading the line between fact and fiction. His short film Landline won the 2018 Grierson Award for Best Documentary Short and his first short Dear Araucaria, made in partnership with the Guardian, won the Audience Award at Sheffield Doc/Fest 2015. The following year, Matt released two more shorts, Four Weddings, his second film made with the Guardian, and Hands Up, Chin Down which had its world premiere at Sheffield Doc/Fest 2018. Matt's film, Earth To Cop is a found-footage, eyewitness portrait of climate change and played at the COP26 opening ceremony in front of 140 world leaders before being picked as one of Vimeo's Best Of The Year 2021. Matt’s most recent short film co-directed with the film's protagonist Georgie Wileman is an intimate, self-documented portrait of a photographer living with endometriosis. This Is Endometriosis had its world premiere at HotDocs, screened at Everyman Cinemas around the UK, was honoured at The Webby Awards, won a Gold Shark at Kinsale and is nominated at the 2025 Grierson Awards for Best Documentary Short.
Matt produces his own films. Named as both a Film London Lodestar and a member of Berlinale Talents, Matt is a founding member of Fee Fie Foe and an associate producer on Notes On Blindness, The Real Charlie Chaplin and the Netflix Original feature Apollo Thirteen: Survival. Most recently, he produced Murewa, directed by Ché Scott-Heron Newton, which premiered at SXSW 2025 and was Longlisted for Best Short at the BIFA Awards 2025. Matt is currently in post-production on his debut feature, With A Gun And A Radio.
In advertising, Matt's work has been nominated and awarded at the Webby Awards, Kinsale Sharks, British Arrows, 1.4 Awards and been selected as part of Vimeo's coveted Top Ten Best Of The Year twice.
One way or another, Vanbur have been an important part of my life for a long time. It’s uncanny how many moments have been marked by their music in some way and we have worked
together on some of my favourite projects ever since I started making films.
The first time I met my partner Jenna was at a listening party for Vanbur’s first EP, Human, and last year Tim and Jess played us down the aisle. Our lives and careers have criss-crossed their way around each other since we first met over a coffee what feels like an age ago and most importantly we have become good friends. As the incredibly talented composers that they are, they have always crafted music that has elevated my film work. I’m also just a huge fan (Human
was parked neatly at the top of my Spotify wrapped in 2020), so when they asked me if I’d like to collaborate with them on the creative direction for their first studio album, Of Becoming, I didn’t even have to think about it.
We had a long chat about how the album came about and the various changes that the band had been through during writing it. There were lots of ideas and images swirling around our group chat and we batted around very loose thoughts for a while - never quite landing on anything. Then one day, Jenna mentioned that she thought the album was in some way about thresholds: about those moments of change where things shift forever. And this got me thinking about windows: thresholds to another world. A few weeks later, I was on a creative retreat on the south coast - during a time in my own life that felt very raw with emotion and change - and I
became a little fixated on documenting the changing light from the windows of one room. Waking up at sunrise every day, the result was over 400 images that depicted a very distinct passage of time, all taken over the course of a single week.
In a way, it’s quite typical for me to be struck by a very short flash of inspiration followed by months and months of working and re-working. I shared a small selection of my favourite
images with Vanbur and, working alongside the incredible graphic designer Torsten Posselt - who also works with Nils Frahm and Olafur Arnalds - the images formed the basis for the album and single artwork for the release. Alongside the artwork, we also created a collection of album teasers: a series of simple mini-narratives, each set to a different track from the album and each one opening on the image of a different window. 'My Own' finds us in the rehearsal studio of dancer Felicity Chadwick. The concept for the film was inspired by the countless videos Vabur receives every week from dancers around the world who, moved by Vanbur's emotive work, film dances to their tracks which they share with them via Instagram. Captivated by the various interpretations and with how movement heightens the musical storytelling, Vanbur briefed me to centre one of the teasers around this inspiration. 'My Own' was the perfect fit and Felicity's stunning choreography and performance is so captivating it felt only right that once she begins to dance the camera simply follows her. This visual language also found its way into the photography series that will accompany the album, and we experimented with reflections and double-exposures, in-keeping with our theme. Throughout the project, Tim and Jess really trusted me and allowed me to play in just the right way, always with a clear vision themselves but allowing me plenty of freedom to experiment.
As a filmmaker, I love simplicity, I love imperfection, I love subtlety, I love things that feel authentic to the story. To me, everything about Vanbur’s music feels textured and organic - it has this incredible quality of feeling totally human and yet also somehow of another world. That combination is something that I strive for in my own work, so in many way our collaboration has always felt like a perfect match.
Making beautiful things with my very talented friends is more or less my favourite thing to do in the world, so to create something that I’m so proud of with Tim and Jess, and with my incredible partner Jenna, has been endlessly rewarding.
