Richard Heslop is a visionary artist. He shot, directed and edited a number of short movies, music videos, TV series and feature films. Heslop also took part in an artists’ collective called The Final Academy. He was a camera operator for Derek Jarman, which helped to catapult him to the pantheon of British creative artists of our age.

His work breaks up with the traditional narrative devices of the social realism. He often questions the roots of right-wing philosophies and the necessity to find scapegoats.

Heslop is also a director of incendiary music videos, often experimenting with light and speed. He has directed music videos for Happy Mondays, New Order, The Smiths, The Cure, Sinead O’Connor and Queen. He once described such work as a futurist, and predicated: “I love speed”.

His short movie Floating, about a family falling apart, toured the world and won the Best Short Film Award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1993. Frank (2012) is an emotional tale about necrophilia, which also attracted critical praise.

Heslop can be reached at richard_heslop@hotmail.co.uk.