"I’m a film school nerd, so I’ve got about a hundred favorite movies. I’d feel like I was cheating on all of them if I narrowed it down to five movies. But con man movies I can do. In no particular order, I guess the first one I’d name is Paper Moon, which, for me, is just a perfect film. It’s also one of the first con man movies I saw that was less about the mechanics of plot and more about the relationships between the characters, and this father-daughter relationship, which is really beautiful. Just a pretty wonderful movie."

"“I’m not typically interested in poetry, but I discovered The Flowers of Evil in high school as I was just becoming a goth and getting into Trent Reznor – and everyone else was getting into the Beat poets, who I find comparably boring if we’re going to discuss druggy, surrealist poetry. This work is so visceral, filthy and gorgeously written. It feels like a distillation of the opium scenes from Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth, but more abstract and extensively documented. This one poem is just a disgusting, sexual description of a corpse that is permanently burned into my mind.”"

"I read this in drama school. It's an analysis from a psychologist's perspective of the meaning and power of fairy tales. One example that sticks in my mind is the metaphor of a child going into the forest. Bettelheim makes the point that the structure of this story parallels children's experiences in life — how you can be frightened but eventually make it through to the other side. One can feel expendable — particularly in this day and age, and especially working in film — and for me, this reinforces the power of storytelling and the necessity of it."

"One of my favorite reads from those fundamental years of art school, I first discovered this book when trying to come to terms with western Enlightenment culture’s broad impact on ideation in artistic practice. So much of Enlightenment thinking is poisoned by prior notions of race that one must ask: Is it ever possible to separate some of our greatest understandings derived from the Enlightenment era from its problematic history? In Race and the Enlightenment, Eze examines foundational writings on race by major Enlightenment figures and lays bare the toxic notions of their time in their own words."

"The album cover was worth the price of the purchase on its own. It was a highly influential record for me. I can remember being at a still life class in art school [Hornsey College of Art] listening to this. I learned every lyric on it. ‘In Every Dream Home A Heartache' is Ferry at his best. They were really hitting their stride here. Their attention to detail on the artwork was amazing. As I said, the album covers were as exciting as the records. To this day, there's a bar set when it comes to presentation, and Ferry set it."

"Probably my absolute favourite. It's very influenced by American Graffiti - It's all in one day, it's the end of school, you've got all the teen cliques – but it's not a standard Hollywood feel good-fest, it's tough and quite sharp. You've got those first experiences of drugs and sex and fights and drinking, all to that great soundtrack. And I love all the stoner stuff, it's just really funny. Again, it's that extraordinary seventies American super liberal moment, which is a completely lost age. It recaptures that: 'Lets all hang out. Politics is over, disco is just around the corner."

"I recently picked up Jean Vigo's dreamy 1934 story of a honeymoon couple heading to Paris on a barge. It's still startling and would have been way out on its own in 1934. Also included on the Artificial Eye DVD is his earlier short Zéro de conduite which was banned for years in France. An anarchic tale of kids taking over a boarding school. You can see how much Truffaut picked up from here and it was a direct influence on the 60s Lindsay Anderson film If. Vigo died young and L'Atalante was his only complete feature."

"Number four would be Dazed and Confused. That was the movie that you saw and you wished it were your life. [laughs] That was a movie that I would watch all the time. I had it on VHS and whenever I was lonely, I’d throw it on. Whenever I wished I was out and about with friends from school, I would just throw that on and felt like I knew [the characters]. That was just one of those films that I just related to at that time. It was incredibly important and it’s another quotable film. I love it."