Face to Face with... Huse Monfaradi

Director Huse Monfaradi began his career at MTV UK before scaling the heady heights of music, helming promos for the Arctic Monkeys, Snow Patrol, and Armand van Helden. Currently unsigned, Monfaradi is gearing up for his latest project - Fuck Off, I love You - a photo exhibition completed in collaboration with his friend Dan Wilton. The roving director took time out in his preparation to talk to shots.net about swearing, skate-boarding and Spanish.

You're about to show an exhibition shortly titled Fuck Off, I Love You… can you tell us a bit about it… why you decided to do it and where the inspiration came from?

Fuck Off, I Love You is a collaborative photographic exhibition I've been working on with a photographer friend of mine Dan Wilton, who shoots editorial for magazines such as Vice, Tank & 'Sup. The idea was really simple - to capture the emotive and cathartic outburst of energy from swearing to camera - a freeze frame moment in mid action. Whereas normally one would search for flawlessness and beauty in conventional photography, imperfections and facial contortions have been the driving force behind this project. The project has been quite personal and emotive for both me and Dan as the sixty subjects of the show are all friends of ours - thirty of Dan's and thirty of mine, including people such as Dougal Wilson and Nick Goldsmith from Hammer & Tongs.

I actually came up with the idea one day lying on the sofa when I was watching a football match on Sky and used my Sky Plus to pause the game. A footballer was taking a throw in, and my eye was drawn not to the player but to the supporters in the background who were all hurling abuse at him. Their faces were all hilariously contorted and it was quite obvious that one of them was angrily shouting "FUCK" another one was jovially calling the player a wanker.
My initial thought was to try and do something photo-journalistic with the idea. I had a romantic ideal that I would travel the world photographing people from different cultures in different situations swearing, capturing it all observationally, and publishing a book along the lines of the kind of books Magnum tend to do. In practice that's a much taller order, so I thought of who could be my immediate and controllable subjects and the idea of using my friends just seemed natural. And collaborating with Dan seemed like the logical next step.


The exhibition has quite a comical title… where did that germinate from?

The title is actually a catchphrase of a friend of Dan's who features in the show, It seemed to capture the sentiment of the project. "Fuck Off"….swearing……"I Love You"…..they're our friends and we love them. We'd had a few working titles such as "Fuck Our Friends" and most recently "Shutthefuckoff" but "Fuck Off, I Love You" was definitely the most apt and seemed to roll off the tongue quite nicely!

Were you always into playing around with cameras when you were a kid or did the passion for directing come later?

I got given my first super8 cameras by my dad when I was about 15. They had a huge sentimental value attached to them as they were cameras that my dad had used to film me and my sisters with when we were kids and my grandfather had given them to him as a gift. I'd mess around with them and make silly teenage films, but as a teenager and even into my early twenties I still had no idea what to do with my life and certainly didn't have any aspirations of being a director. I was too busy skateboarding. My life literally revolved around that scene and the lifestyle - the music, skateboard films, fashion and photography.

Had I known that was the career path I was going to take then I would have most certainly studied film and media rather than the randomness of doing a degree in Spanish. It's a regret I have to this day that I didn't get that head start I feel I could have had if I'd gone to film school. Interestingly though a lot of friends of mine who did go to film school wish they had "discovered" their sensibilities in the more natural way that I did.

Who are some of your influences and are there any specific aesthetic references that inform your work?

I will always be a fan of Ken Loach, Hal Ashby and Woody Allen, and I'd love to say Fellini, Antonioni and Godard are huge influences, but much as I have immense respect for those directors, they just aren't as tangible for me as some of the more contemporary names such as Wes Anderson, Christopher Nolan, Spike Jonze and Shane Meadows to name a few. I've always been hugely envious of Jonathan Glazer's work because his work appears so effortless and yet powerful. I remember when I first started directing, working in production at MTV UK many years ago, and he had just directed Richard Ashcroft's "Song For The Lovers", I literally watched the digibeta of that fifty times, noting the time code of when and where he would cut from wides to close ups.


Comedy is definitely my favoured genre and i definitely aspire towards the "mock-u-mentary" style of Christopher Guest's films such as Best In Show, A Mighty Wind, and This Is Spinal Tap. That style was a direct influence on my latest comedy short film "The Protege" which is about a tennis coach and his pupil, written by two writers and performers I work with a fair bit, Jamie Glassman and Matthew Steer http://www.husemonfaradi.com/Huse_Monfaradi/The_Protege.html


You've directed videos for the likes of Snow Patrol, Arctic Monkeys, Armand van Helden and more… do you have any artists you enjoy working with and would like to work with again?

I think the two artists I enjoyed working with the most were Badly Drawn Boy and definitely Arctic Monkeys. Damon Gough was just super warm and friendly and really loved the video for "Journey From A to B" that I directed for him. When I first worked with Arctic Monkeys on their debut single "I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor" it was a really exciting time and I really felt that i was part of something quite new and fresh. They were just no nonsense, super intelligent guys who knew exactly what they wanted and were supremely confident - really quite incredible when you remember they were only around 19 years old then.

Where did you grow up and did your family have any influence on your career choice?

I was actually born in Bahrain to a Persian family but moved to London when I was super young. I was raised in the ghettos of West London. Erm, ok, Isleworth, where my mum and dad still live. I think the one major influence they had on me was to give me total freedom in whatever I wanted to do and complete support and belief.

If you had an unlimited budget what project would you like to work on and why?


I spent the best part of last year trying to get short film funded called "Justin Hoffman" with my writing partner Jamie Glassman. At one stage it looked like it was all going to happen with BBC Films but it wasn't to be. We only needed about £15k. So I'd be happy to be given just that to be honest! My latest idea to raise the money was to put a gala event on where I would do ten rounds with an amateur boxer, get everyone to sponsor me and sell tickets. Problem is I've never thrown a punch in my life and might get beaten to death.
Hang on, the iphone Facetime ad is on TV, Makes me cry every time….I have to go…

www.husemonfaradi.com
www.danwilton.co.uk