Purple magazine publisher Olivier Zahm, curator and filmmaker Aaron Rose and music video director Floria Sigismondi are among the creative bigwigs who are quizzed on everything from their fantasy powers to favorite smells by British filmmaker Quentin Jones in today’s short film. Each of them took part in last month’s LA-centric Semi-Permanent event–a traveling global conference of multidisciplinary exhibits, talks, and workshops designed to foster creative thinking–when captured on camera and grilled by the Cambridge philosophy graduate. London-raised and recent New York transplant Jones is a multifaceted filmmaker using her talents as illustrator, director and sometime model in her imaginative and visually arresting films for publications including Vogue and AnOther and clients such as Chanel and Kenzo. Here, we reverse the interrogation and turn the director’s questions back on her.

What do you find most inspiring creatively about LA?
Quentin Jones: Could LA be the opposite city to London? Maybe not quite, but something about being in a place so different to your hometown is freeing. Londoners in LA can re-invent themselves and shake off the cynicism that comes with Tesco and wet streets. I also find the emerging art-scene in LA really interesting too–mainly because I don't associate easy living with artistic hubs. I am curious to see the collective progression of ideas from LA artists in the next decade.  I wonder how my work would change if life were a sunny blur of low-rise buildings, chopped salads and highways.

What do you consider to be the greatest invention?
QJ: Peanut butter. Or am I confusing addiction with admiration?

3 words to describe your current state of mind?
QJ: Rendering, excited, and inky.

Which actor (dead or alive) would play you in a movie of your life?
QJ: River Phoenix.

What is your favorite drink?
QJ: A gin dirty martini, extra dirty.

What's your earliest creative memory?
QJ: My dad taking me to draw cacti at a museum in Toronto.

Which animal would you least like to look like?
QJ: A sheep. It would be really hard to focus if my eyes faced opposing walls.

The name of your autobiography?
QJ: Diaries of the accidental.

Favorite smell?
QJ: The stems of tomato plants.

What's your creative comfort zone?
QJ: Definitely editing on After Effects. But it is also pretty tedious.  Oh and making images with black ink and white paper. I could do that forever and not get bored.

If you were a superhero what would your power be?
QJ: My superpower would be a driver. With a selection of shoes in the boot.

The next Semi-Permanent conference will take place in Sydney, May 24-25.