I've always thought in concepts and images rather than logic.

At school I would often get into trouble as my mind would wander off and I would find myself thinking of various different landscapes and sometimes sad, lonely characters would appear within these landscapes.

Then, gradually stories would grow inside me and I would begin to wish I was somewhere else where I would be free to indulge in these stories and even realise them on film or in a book.

At times I would imagine tracks to lay over the landscapes by strange musicians like Mike Oldfield and Kate Bush who made music which often seemed to me to conjour up visuals like musical shapes. It was here, at school where I discovered a passion for film or at least manipulating words and images.

As I grew older I began to write some of these stories and draw sad but comical pictures. This was aided by my intense obsession with film.

At the age of 15 I was awarded the Dorset cup for a story called 'Them Dern Checkens' which was one of a collection of grubby farm based stories written in a west country dialect. This story concerned a disgruntled farmer who found himself in the unlikely position of being invaded by vampire chickens. I am now working on getting these stories made into an animated series.

By 16 my writing had turned dark and disturbing as I battled with the usual teenaged angst and depression but I will not bore you with that. I then took A Level Theatre studies and found that I had a talent for thinking up conceptual ideas by reading material by surreal writers such as Samuel Becket.

I always had an interest in all things dark and disturbing and I began to take an interest in world cinema where I found all manner of strange and alarming cinematic fuel for my fire. Films such as the Australian 'Bad Boy Bubby' and the Spanish 'The Tit and the Moon' filled me with spirit and the desire to make my own films and create new and exciting images.

At 18 I had started a degree at Newport University in Film studies. It is here that I started producing weird and wonderful films on subjects like sexuality, sleeplessness, humour and pain and all manner of things.

Since then I have developed a company called Maggie Dog Films Ltd with my partner Tuesday and we have had short films shown in Canada, Russia and Finland. We have run workshops in Calgary and Wisconsin and are now hoping to travel to Moscow to meet with other like minded people.

The reason for such an amount of travel is simple. The British film industry is not able to support many of the hundreds of talented visual artists that really have things to offer. This is a constant concern and source of frustration as we have two feature length scripts that have caused a large amount of interest but as yet no funding.

For now we are busy coming up with scripts and working with new people on micro budget short productions. We will carry on providing material for short film festivals and bugging funding bodies who may find our work interesting and engaging.

Lee Burgess - May 2006

Beanz Meanz War - a short film by Lee and Tuesday

Disabled Parents Diary