The voice of Hiroshima atomic blast survivor, Ms Setsuko Enya features at the start. How did you come to meet her and to record her story?

I met Ms Enya through the World Friendship Center in Hiroshima. The Center arranged for me to meet with Ms Enya and her friend Ms Ichimura, who acted as our translator. We spent three and a half hours together talking about Ms Enya's experiences.

Having spoken at length with Ms Enya, how did you decide on the quotation that introduces the film?

Little Boy is very different than other works that I have made. Although her story is gripping and very moving: it felt wrong to try to represent that, as that would've been impossible. So, focusing on Ms Enya's memory of darkness and not The Flash, The Light, and having those few lines seem like the appropriate manner with which to deal with her narratives.

The visual focus of the film is footage of the sky abstracted. Why did you choose this ethereal space as the focal point?

Abstraction feels like the only way for me to begin to explore what happened to Ms Enya and to Hiroshima. Stop frame animations inherently contain time and image together. Little Boy is made through stop frame animation of a clear blue sky, shot at the Hiroshima Peace Museum which is built at the location of the epicenter of the atomic blast in 1945.

Why did you choose to combine hand processed 16mm film with the stop frame technique?

The hand processing in buckets at a totally rudimentary level creates the black static that flows/falls over top of the blue sky: creating a spatial dynamic between the blue sky of Hiroshima and the holes made in the emulsion by the process.

What inspired the soundtrack to the film? How did you produce it?

The soundtrack was recorded in Hiroshima, Tokyo and London. It comprises field recordings and music written specifically for the film.

My intention was to have moments in the film where it was impossible to breathe properly.