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MAHLER MAKES ANYTHING TASTEFUL

When the Iris Blogger last saw some of our guests on Thursday night, they were heading in the direction of Wow, the one place guaranteed to keep pouring the drinks until 3am.
Reports on what happened in said bar were a little sketchy as sunlight crept over the city, but included one of our jury waking up in a Top Gun t-shirt that wasn’t his own (after a hair-raising experience with a blown tyre and the father of the person he left Wow with) and another pulling some – quite frankly acrobatic – dance moves with a well-respected British journalist. (For the latter, there is photographic evidence.)

Some of Thursday night’s events shall never, ever be spoken of again, and others – once the dust has settled – will become the stuff of folklore and legend.
But on with the festival.

The day began with the Producer’s Forum, which the Iris Blogger sadly missed this year as he was outside in the bar, goofing about in front of the camera with Iris TV head honcho (and this year, juror) Andrew Gurney. Much of the pair’s poor-man’s-Pete-and-Dud shenanigans are likely to end up on the cutting room floor, but it was all good fun.

After a strong first programme, and mixed second and third programmes yesterday (everyone remembers “THAT film”… let’s just leave it at that) Programme 4 was an absolute belter. There wasn’t a single dubious or misguided film in the bunch – they were all cracking. Forced at metaphorical gunpoint to pick two favourites, the Iris Blogger would have to say Elissa Osborne and Jeff McCutcheon’s ‘Change’, set against the backdrop of the 2008 US presidential election and the vote on Prop 8, and Yoav Brill’s ‘Ishihara’. The former was a stunning, gritty slice of life drama with a documentary feel and breath-taking performances, while the latter was a delightful animation about – amongst other things – colour blindness, based upon the Ishihara test. Two more different films you’re unlikely to see this year, but both were amazing.

A special mention should, perhaps, go to ‘Fourplay San Francisco’, if only because it showed just how much you can get away with if you stick some Mahler on your soundtrack. How a film with that subject matter and content managed to feel tasteful and quite touching still baffles the Iris Blogger.
Day 3’s Iris brunch, for film-makers and Friends of Iris, was served at Bellini’s, a firm favourite last year, and yes… they had the tiramisu again. The Iris Blogger was a happy – not to mention increasingly fat – bunny.

As if the jury’s job hadn’t been made hard enough by the dazzling Programme 4, along came Programme 5, starting with Brazilian film ‘Eu Não Quero Voltar Sozinho’ (I Don’t Want To Go Back Alone). Seriously… this is another one to look out for come Saturday night. If there was a single audience member who didn’t find this film touching, sweet and funny, the Iris Blogger has yet to meet them. Again, if forced to pick just one more film from a really strong line-up of five, the IB would say ‘Junk’, Joe Morris’s hard-hitting drama about the ups and downs (well, mostly the downs) of a homeless gay couple in their teens. It had the feel and the impact of Ken Loach’s ‘Sweet Sixteen’, and could be a contender for Best UK Short, at the very least.

As the sun set over Cardiff (and boy… the view from the upstairs bar at Cineworld never gets boring when it’s sunny), the team from Peccadillo Pictures treated us to drinks and nibbles to celebrate the launch of their new compilation DVD, ‘Boys On Film: Bad Romance’.

Then it was time for the 6th and final programme of shorts. This was a diverse little group of films, but the strongest were possibly Jason Knade’s ‘Cyclicity’ and Jon Stanford’s ‘Lost Tracks’. Initially the Iris Blogger thought the first of these, in which two strangers discuss an imaginary relationship while on a ferris wheel, was going to get a little twee, but there was a nicely dry humour that steered it well away from the mawkish.

‘Lost Tracks’ gave us a story about bored and disaffected youths in England’s rural hinterlands, with a great performance from its lead actress, and a good supporting turn by John “Boycee” Challis. (Apologies to those who’ve never seen ‘Only Fools & Horses’, and therefore have no idea who or what a “Boycee” is.)

And breaking his own self-imposed rules, the Iris Blogger should also mention Eric Gernand’s ‘Nice Shirt’, if only because it cheered us all up after a lot of high emotions and weighty drama.
By now, night had fallen and it was off to the Park Inn for new Iris sponsor The London Women’s Clinic’s drinks reception. The LWC are sponsoring awards for Best Actor and Best Actress in this year’s feature films, and were more than generous when it came to wine and canapés, too.
And so to Day 3’s final film, the late night screening of ‘Vampires: Brighter In Darkness’. This gritty, hard-hitting documentary about life in the northern town of Chester was…
Oh, who am I kidding? It was a film about vampires. It had a scene in which two sexy vampires made out in a shower. End of.

By the time the Q&A with director Jason Davitt and star Rhys Howells was over it was appropriately well past midnight, and along with a small army of Iriseers (I’m going to keep saying it until it sticks) this virtually undead blogger dragged his increasingly cadaverous self over to Pulse, where he drank and danced and drank some more until it was way past his bedtime. When he left the club, certain members of the jury and the Iris team were still dancing and still drinking.
What happened next? Watch this space…