The Fetishist

Directed by Jim Trainor

“Presents scenes from the life of William Heirens, dubbed the “Lipstick Killer” .. Trainor imagines Heirens’s private moments through a series of dreamlike vignettes. Taking cues from a study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry in 1946, Trainor depicts the juvenile Heirens’s pathological obsessions and behavioral abnormalities—his penchant for stealing women’s underwear, his compulsion to break into apartments and defecate in them .. “I got interested in a process of rote, uncritical tracing, where my drawings would get bent out of shape without much attempt to control them...I like Sharpie pens because the thick line, though unforgiving, goes down quickly; I can draw lots of pictures quickly. I stopped being concerned about their awkwardness.” These strategies, he explained, allowed the violent disturbances of Heirens’s psyche to be articulated through trembling visual designs, a fitting marriage of style and subject." - Light Industry