Blog 07
David Llewellyn's Iris Prize blog
Saturday 6th October 2007
It's a little after midday on Sunday, I have a sore head, and Iris has left the building. Day three began with the fifth, and final, programme of short films, which kicked off with Babae, a monochrome digital film shot in a Filipino slum which I think took everyone by surprise as it developed from a simple, but moving portrayal of children living on (literally) the wrong side of the tracks, into a depiction of a far-from-nuclear family.
There were two offerings from Indian American director Soman Chainani. The first, Davy & Stu, featured some puzzling Scottish accents which flawed an otherwise interesting and well-shot film, but the second, Kali Ma, was a resounding success; a suspenseful and often hilarious revenge story with a Patricia Highsmith vein of black humour running throughout.
Peking Turkey, a Canadian film by Michael Mew, was a culture-clash comedy with an hysterical turn by a 'street' talking Chinese mother and the stoic father who insists on calling his future son-in-law Pear (his name is 'Pierre').
I must admit that when I first read the description of Private Life in the Iris programme, my heart sank. Abbe Robinson's film, shot in the North of England, is a period piece set in 1952. Knowing the budget limitations of short, independent films it seemed beyond all reason that somebody might be able to produce a believable, detailed reconstruction of the era, but the film achieved it excellently. In a year which marks the fortieth anniversary of the legalisation of homosexuality in the UK, it was a timely reminder of Britain in the years immediately preceding the Wolfenden Report, and a joyous blend of Ealing Comedies and 'Brief Encounter'.
Serene Hunter provided an interesting flip-side to Programme 4's 'Le Weekend'; written and directed by an American in Paris; Jason Bushman (pictured above right). Interestingly, it was one of the few films in the whole Prize programme to focus almost exclusively on sexual mores, with MPAA-baitingly explicit sex scenes. Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course.
From Chapter Arts we dashed to the Irismobile, which I would like to say was a purple stretch limo with 'Priscilla' style drag queens dancing on its roof, but which was, in fact, a minibus. We ate lunch at the ever-brilliant Spice Merchant in Cardiff Bay (actually, I think I ate two lunches), and then the jury were whisked away to a top secret location, to make their final decision. There were further features shown throughout the afternoon, and as the blogger for Iris I'd love to say I saw them all, but it would be a big fat lie.
Deciding to make the most of my role as a friend of Iris, I took Iris judge Brent Gorski and his lovely friend Anna on a tour of the Bay ("That's where Torchwood is... That's where Shirley Bassey used to sing etc") before taking them into town so that they could get a bite to eat.
And therein lies the fundamental flaw. You see, in addition to hosting the inaugural Iris Prize, Cardiff, on Saturday October 6th, 2007, was home to about seventy thousand visiting New Zealanders and French people, in town to watch the rugby. From Callaghan Square to the castle, the city centre was a sea of blue and black, with barely enough room to swing a Kiwi. Our poor American visitors had to walk all the way back to the Bay just to find a restaurant that wasn't full of people wearing stupid hats and blowing klaxons. I then had just enough time to go home, put on my gladrags, and get back to town in time for the grand finale.
After a winning turn from ITV Wales' very own Hywel James, it was announced that 'Private Life' by Abbe Robinson (above left, receiving her prize from International Jury Member Lisa Gornick) had won the £1000 prize for best British short in the programme, and that the winner of the Iris Prize over all was...(Drum roll...)Pariah! I must say, I was pleased with the choice. It must have been an incredibly difficult choice for the jury, and special mention was made of 'Hello, My Name Is Hermann', 'Le Weekend', 'Peace Talk', and 'For The Love Of God', all of which would have been battling it out on my shortlist for the outright winner.
Sadly, Pariah's director, Dee Rees, was not one of the film makers able to attend this year's festival, but it will be interesting to see how she adapts to shooting a film in the UK with a presumably British cast, given that the context and setting of her winning short were so exact, even if the themes were universal.
The closing ceremony itself was, of course, followed by the party (pictured right), during which your narrator was a paragon of virtue and stuck to soft drinks.
Ha ha... Oh... oh, I'm sorry, it's no good... I am of course lying through my teeth. The party was enormous fun, and I personally drank enough Stella Artois to keep the national budget of Belgium afloat during their current political malaise. It was the perfect end to a thoroughly enjoyable three days, and many revellers carried on into the wee hours, but after a few post-party congratulatory drinks at the home of festival organiser Berwyn Rowlands and his lovely husband Grant it was time for this very tired and slightly tipsy blogger to hit the hay.
See you all next year!
Friday 5th October 2007
Day two kicked off with the Producer's Forum; a healthy and heated debated about the practical side of producing queer cinema, encompassing all aspects of the film-making process; from initial conception (and how considerations of profit etc might influence that), all the way through to distribution; perhaps the hottest topic in cinema at the moment. It was interesting to note how many of the problems facing queer cinema are not restricted solely to queer cinema, but affect all channels of independent film making, particularly distribution.
The question also arose as to the need for LGBT film festivals full stop, in a world in which some (if not much) LGBT material can be found at general film festivals. Perhaps my "quote of the session" on this subject came from US producer and Iris jury member Christopher Racster (pictured, right)), who said (and I'm paraphrasing here) that the purpose of festivals like this is community building rather than ghettoizing, and that getting LGBT stories out there was a good means of doing this. I guess a great example of this would be yesterday's Pariah; a film which, on the surface, would appear to have nothing or very little to do with my life. Its protagonist is a teenaged black lesbian in the US - I am a nearly-but-not-quite-30-year-old white gay man in the UK. And yet there were moments in that film which displayed a great universality that would, I imagine, speak to many.
If day one's programmes made the jury's job difficult, day two's made them virtually impossible. Programme Three kicked off with Kareem Mortimer's visually lyrical Float, a film which seemed to be as much about obsessive compulsive disorder and alienation as sexuality and homophobia, and was a richer film for it. I was genuinely blown away by Arthur Halpern's Futures (and Derivatives), which started like a slightly strange, dream-like episode of 'The Office' and then mutated, brilliantly, into a technicolour wonderland of life-affirming imagery that left your humble narrator with the biggest, stupidest grin he's had on his face for a long time.
From the sublime to the hilarious, with Michael Simon's Gay Zombie. Imagine 'Queer As Folk' being guest-directed by George A. Romero and you're half way there. Being a massive Romero fan this was completely up my street, and featured great central performances.
In complete contrast we then had Karine Silverwoman's (pictured, left) very touching documentary short Hello, My Name Is Herman; a lovely little piece which transcended the themes of sexuality and gender to incorporate a great many others, including religion, politics, and race, and the way in which these issues are often tied up within the family dynamic.
Programme Four provided us with another great example of compare-and-contrast. While Dennis Shinner's (pictured left)interesting and maybe just a little bit sexy Area X made the most of the digital video aesthetic, paying great attention to those places that lend themselves to that kind of grainy visual quality like subways and restrooms, Timothy Smith's Le Weekend was a gorgeously-filmed love-note to London shot on Super 8. Continuing the apparent theme of polar opposites and wild contrasts, Marc Rees's The Dancing Marquis' Diaries featured some stunning, dream-like images while Small Town Boy provided us with perhaps the most nail-biting documentary I've seen since 'One Day In September'. David, a gay 15 year old intent on being his rural town carnival's first "Alternative Carnival Queen" made for a fascinating, sometimes comical, but ultimately sympathetic and admirable character. In a similar locale, though thematically quite different, we had Joan Beveridge's White Fire, which alongisde 'Small Town Boy' was a good reminder, if it were needed, that gay and lesbian people do not live exclusively in the more cosmopolitan parts of the world.
I rounded the evening off with the European premiere of Holding Trevor, the film writting by and starring my fellow 'Writer's Session' panelist, not to mention Iris judge, Brent Gorski (pictured below left). Thankfully, given the circumstances, the film was a triumph. Note perfect, naturalistic performances from the whole cast, particularly the central triumverate of Gorski, Jay Brennan and Melissa Searing, and a beautifully subtle but sock-in-the-jaw powerful script. Sadly, 'Holding Trevor' and the following Q&A meant I couldn't get to Cineworld in time to watch Gay Bed And Breakfast Of Terror, which must qualify as the single best film title in the last 25 years. If you can think of a better, or at least more self-explanatory title than that, I'd be interested to know what it is.
Thursday 4th October 2007
Day one of the Iris Prize...
After a slap-up brunch at The Bay Restaurant in, appropriately enough the Bay, events were kicked off with the writers session. Cath (pictured, right) and Brent were great. I have no memory of anything I said, on account of a strange habit I have of mentally blocking out any incident in which I have been remotely nervous or under pressure, but it was enjoyable, and provoked some interesting discussion that would feed, almost directly, into some of the issues raised by the films in the first and second shorts programme.
It became very quickly apparent, after just five films, that the jury's job is going to be a hard one. On my personal recommended list, I would have to give a special mention to Dee Rees's Pariah, a beautifully shot mini-epic of emotion that crams in both belly laughs and scenes that many will find harrowing in under half an hour. In complete contrast, Alison Reid's film Succubus was the bizarre, hilarious, and ultimately touching story of a lesbian couple's attempt to conceive, told via the medium of the Hollywood action blockbuster.
After Programme 1 I found myself dashing back to my house (a mere stone's throw from Chapter Arts, luckily), cooking pasta, and changing my t-shirt in less time than it normally takes me to tie my shoelaces. It was then into town, and Cineworld, for Programme 2.
With Programme 2 the jury's job became even more unenviable. If the first programme seemed eclectic, Programme 2 was positively going-to-the-shop-in-your-slippers-and-a-viking-helmet bonkers. Strangest of all was, perhaps, Joe Tucker's For The Love Of God, a truly surreal mash-up of 'Wallace And Gromit', Pasolini, and 'A Matter Of Life And Death', with an all star cast of Steve Coogan, Ian McKellan, and 'Nighty Night' star Julia Davis. It also featured perhaps the most blasphemous line I've ever heard in a film. Ever.
Jenifer Malmqvist's Peace Talk seemed to go down well with everyone I spoke to; a wonderfully understated drama with excellent performances from its young actresses, particularly Josephina Blomberg (so good I made a note of her name in the dark) in the lead role; charming, witty, and brilliantly observed.
Scarred by Damien Rea (pictured, right) was a kind of gay 'Tales Of The Unexpected', for want of a much, much better description, which kept you guessing right up until the end; except that it didn't end with a silhouetted naked woman dancing in front of a candle.
The film with perhaps the greatest resonance for me was Jamie Travis's The Saddest Boy In The World, which felt like my childhood as reimagined by David Lynch; though those who have seen the film might think this is way too big a window into my neuroses.
Of course, there are lots of films I haven't mentioned, but that isn't to say they weren't good or worth mentioning - I can say in all honesty that there hasn't been a bad film shown. Any misgivings one might have about the degree of quality being sacrificed a little in a festival whose content is, to a certain extent, restricted, were cancelled out by the end of Programme 1.
The evening ended with the gala showing, and Welsh premiere, of Eytan Fox's spellbinding The Bubble. This multi-layered, multi-faceted take on life in modern day Tel Aviv was an eye-opener to anyone with cosy assumptions about the issue of Israel and Palestine, and while not a documentary by any stretch, it still gave some insight into the personal complexities of living in a city and a country where the slings and arrows of emotional misfortune are not the only things that can hurt you.
It's now 9:45 on Friday morning, and in the Jack Bauer-like world that is festival-going, I've just about got time for a bacon sandwich before starting all over again!
Wednesday 3 October 2007
"Iris... Iris... I don't know nobody named Iris..." Says Harvey Keitel's fedora-and-vest-wearing pimp towards the end of the film 'Taxi Driver', and for some reason it was that line that used to pop into my head every time I heard the name.
Suddenly, however, another Iris has bumped Jodie Foster's underaged goodtime girl from my imagination and taken centre stage.
Iris, goddess of the rainbow, and Earth's connection to the Heavens in Greek mythology; Iris, the pigmented fibrovascular tissue around your pupil, otherwise known as the 'coloured bit' of your eye; and now Iris, the international prize for a gay and lesbian short film, to be hosted here, in Cardiff.
My name is David Llewellyn, and in addition to taking part in the Writer's Session (Thursday, 2:30pm, Chapter Arts) with US writer and actor Brent Gorski, and 'Torchwood' scribe Cath Tregenna, I will be attending most, if not all of the Iris events and filling you in on all the latest news and gossip as the weekend unfolds. It promises to be an exciting and entertaining three days, with five programmes consisting of thirty short films from as far afield as the US, Hong Kong, and the Phillipines, not to mention seven feature length films, the aforementioned Writer's Session, a Producer's Forum, and of course the prize itself. By Sunday, you'll most definitely know somebody named Iris.
See you there!
David Llewellyn is a freelance writer living and working in Cardiff.
His novel 'Eleven' was published by Seren Press in May 2006 and his next novel will be published in May 2008.