For today’s Mandy In-Depth, I take a closer look at my second film Man Around the House — a surreal kitchen sink/home invasion hybrid. Expect Velcro, synthesizers and many a production blunder. In October of 2020, 2 months after the release of The Bedsit Tapes, I started on a follow…

Some know me as Joe, but most know me as Mandy Sweats — a surreal, drag adjacent abomination and short filmmaker. In this series, I’ll be explaining a little about each of my films, their influences and my creative process. Here, I go back to the first Mandy short I…

Instagram, on the surface, seems like it should be a dream platform for artists and activists alike — a captive audience, inbuilt sociability, and a clear focus on visual artistic expression. Then how come so many artists and activists are unhappy with the platform? The answer comes down to corporate…

I am a devotional fan of Nigella Lawson. Often when I tell people this, or when they meet me and I’m wearing my Nigella Lawson t-shirt, they assume I am being ironic. They underestimate the sort of deference a 24 year old man would have for a famous TV-chef, but…

From guerrilla style puppet shows, to punk rockers and club kids, subcultures have always sought avenues that allow for a more fiscally conservative approach. Whether it be to circumnavigate the pressures of arts funding, to rally against a capital driven society, or simply to try and create something out of…

It’s the phrase that sends a shiver down the spine of many a prospective employee. But we are right to wary of the company that sells itself as ‘one big happy family’. Beneath the veneer of comfort and support, there lies a host of exploitative tactics that are driving us…

My mum tells me that ever since I was about 8 years old, I always made it clear that I couldn’t wait to be an adult and live on my own. In my teenage years, that dream was compounded by a burgeoning obsession in queer media — tales of young…

From chainsaw wielding psychopaths and Russian family dramas, to French provincial maidens and AIDS activists in 1980s Manhattan… I have managed to cover a lot of literary ground in 2020. Here, I compile the best of the best. On New Year’s day, 2020, I set myself a challenge — to…

In a year where venues have been closed and dancefloors off-limits, it stings even more to sit and reflect on what has surely been an incredible year of music. Whether it be the swaggering disco-indebted returns, indie-pop masterpieces or uncompromising sonic adventures for unprecednetd times, music this year has seen…