When most of us think of Krishna, we don't imagine the Hindu deity flanked by men in chains and leather hotpants. But then we don't often imagine westerns being shot in the east of England, which is where these shots come from, stills from the artist Shezad Dawood's first full-length film, Feature, made at the Wysing Arts Centre, between Cambridge and Royston.

Feature plays with the genre of the western, drawing on Dawood's mixed Indian/Pakistani heritage and throwing in everything from undead gunfighters to a surprising arrival of Valkyries in a surreal Deadwood-meets-Bollywood mix. Though what he found in the people of Cambridgeshire was every bit as odd as anything that he put into his plot.

“We did an open casting for the public but we also wanted to find quite specific elements within that public,” he says. “We found these western re-enactors called the Outlaws. Even on the day of filming we weren't sure they were going to arrive. I remember turning around and seeing a bloke with a scar over his eye, all dressed in black with a white beard. They turned up with a whole kit of explosives.”

As well as dynamite-toting cowboy fanatics, Dawood stumbled across a group of role-playing game enthusiasts, who just happened to have an available set of western-style backdrops that they use when not playing at Vikings versus Anglo-Saxons. In a bizarre piece of synchronicity the role-players also had experience of playing the cowboy zombies that Dawood's plot demanded, as they had previously taken part in a game called “flying lead, walking dead”.

Dawood's research also gave him an unexpected insight into the sexual peccadilloes of the locals, as he uncovered an underground gay club scene based upon dressing in fetish versions of cowboy gear, with aficionados eschewing checked shirts and denims in favour of leather chaps and studded collars. Though an arguably stranger discovery came as the result of a night out at a karaoke bar near to Newmarket frequented by jockeys.

“I duetted on a song with one chap and he and his brother said they had always wanted to be in a cowboy movie,” Dawood says. “They actually turned up on set with two thoroughbred racehorses.”

Feature can be seen at: Met Gallery, Leeds June 19-July 13; Castlefield Gallery, Manchester, Aug 7-Sept 21; The Eastside Projects, Birmingham, Sept 26-Nov 1. It will also feature in the Tate Triennial.

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