Appearing in three films at London’s Fright Fest, Mickey Keating’s POD, Ted Geogehan’s WE ARE STILL HERE and BODY by Dan Burk and Robert Olsen, Scifinow took notice and posts this extensive interview with Fessenden.
It’s a bastard genre and I stand by it. I think the world is a frightening place and people should be shocked out of their complacency. Now the irony is, I don’t know that everybody thinks of horror that way, but I think of it as a confrontational genre, a way to scream from the rafters, ‘Look at humanity, it needs fixing, it’s a mess, look at how we treat each other.’ So I use it as a punishing genre! [laughs]
I love it, and I also love the aesthetic of horror, the creepy, the cobwebby cellars and corridors, I like the darkness and I like the night and a big full moon and a creaking tree. So these are actually purely aesthetic things and you can almost not quite put your finger on why you’re like that. I think it’s literally psychology or something dreadful happened when I was a kid that I don’t remember [laughs].
But at the same time I do resent not being taken seriously as a filmmaker because you’re involved in the genre. I think that’s just an oversight of the culture and so it will be. People actually are afraid of death and they’re a little wary of people who are constantly harping about death [laughs]! So you’re a little bit like the weird guy in the room, let’s face it, and that’s like being a punk rocker, it makes me feel OK, I don’t mind. I don’t know that the pristine glowing happy smiling society is particularly accurate to our experience in life so I’d rather call it like it is: a bit of a scary place.
read the full article at scifinow
