In the last couple of days the likes of The Guardian, Pink News, and several overseas publications have published angry stories about the MPAA (which runs the American film classification system), giving the gay-themed Brit flick Pride the incredibly restrictive ‘NC-17’ rating. The only problem with that? It’s not true.

The film has actually been rated ‘R’, with the reason given being ‘for language and brief sexual content.’ Considering the movie contains a decent amount of cursing and the next rating down in the US, ‘PG-13’, only allows a single use of the ‘F’ word, it’s not surprising it got an ‘R’.

Pride follows a group gay men and lesbians in the 1980s who raise money for striking miners and begin to develop a relationship with the South Wales village that accepts their help.

The NC-17 confusion seems to stem from an Independent article which doesn’t specifically mention the rating, although does give the correct information that the R rating means ‘Pride is considered inappropriate for unaccompanied 16-year-olds’. That description seems to have been misinterpreted by others as meaning it was given the more restrictive NC-17 rating, due to difficulty amongst UK journalists in understanding how the US rating system works and that it’s not completely analogous to the British BBFC system.

The Independent report came complete with a quote from Human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, who says, “It is outrageous, knee-jerk homophobia. There’s no significant sex or violence in Pride to justify strong ratings. The American classification board seems to automatically view any film with even the mildest gay content as unfit for people under 17.”

However while it is often true that the MPAA can be exceedingly harsh with gay material, in this case Pride would have been given an R rating whether it was about gay people or not. Giving the film an NC-17 rating would have been ridiculously extreme, considering it’s usually reserved for film with massive amounts of sadistic violence or explicit sex, but due to the (admittedly overzealous) way the MPAA handles swearing, the R rating was to be expected.

NC-17 was brought in during the the early 90s to replace the X rating, with the hope it would allow a space for truly adult entertainment that wouldn’t be tarnished with that pornographic reputation ‘X’ had come to imply. However it never worked and even now most cinema chains refuse to screen NC-17 movies and the majority of mainstream media won’t even accept adverts for them, as it’s normally considered these film will be extreme. Cinemas showing films with that rating are not supposed to allow anyone 17 or under to attend.

R meanwhile means those under 18 can see the film as long as they are accompanied by an adult. Although most British people would think this means it’s the same as an 18 British certificate, in reality most films rated both 15 and 18 in Britain would get an R rating in the US.

As a result you could actually argue the US has been more lenient that the UK, as in Britain nobody under 15 can see Pride at all, while in America, if an adult wishes to accompany a minor to watch the uplifting feel-good movie, they can.

In the past the MPAA’s judgement over gay content in films has been brought into question over the likes of Love Is Strange, which was given an ‘R’ rating despite having no sex, and the teen comedy GBF (Gay Best Friend), which got an ‘R’ even though director Darren Stein was keen to point out that it didn’t have “a single F-bomb, hint of nudity or violence in the film”.

The secretive ratings organisation, which won’t say who rates the movies (other than it’s known religious representatives are included on the judging panel), does need massive reform and needs to be far less prudish about bad language, sex and homosexuality, but as Pride got the rating it would have done irrespective of the sexuality of its characters, it’s the wrong fight to pick.

In July GLAAD released their Studio Responsibility Index for 2014, which suggested a mixed picture for the representation of LGBT characters in films released by the major studios, with perhaps more bad news than good. However things are moving in a slightly more positive direction on US TV, with GLAAD’s 8th annual Network Responsibility Index giving three networks an ‘Excellent’ rating for the first time in the same year – ABC Family, HBO, and MTV.

The NRI looked at five broadcast networks and 10 cable networks from June 1, 2013 to May 31, 2014 networks, examining over 5,000 hours of programming. Along with the Excellent ratings for ABC Family, HBO and MTV, there were Good ratings for ABC, The CW, FOX, NBC, FX and Showtime, and Adequate for CBS, TLC and USA. It wasn’t all good news asA&E, History and TNT were given Failing grades.

The accompanying Where We Are on TV report counts the number of LGBT characters in the just starting 2014-2015 television season. It finds that 3.9% of primetime broadcast scripted series regulars will be lesbian, gay or bisexual characters, which is an increase from 3.3% last year. Fox did best with 6.5% of characters being LGBT. In addition, GLAAD counted 33 recurring lesbian, gay or bisexual characters on broadcast scripted series, though none of those characters are transgender. GLAAD also counted 64 regular and 41 recurring LGBT characters on primetime scripted cable series.

The lack of transgender characters is still a major cause for concern – especially coming in the same year the Studio Responsibility Index didn’t have a single movie with a transgender lead character – and as a result GLAAD had decided that in order to achieve an Excellent grade in the future, networks must include significant transgender content, not just lesbian and gay.

“Television networks are playing a key role in promoting cultural understanding of LGBT lives around the world, and are now producing some of the best LGBT-inclusive programming we’ve yet seen,” said GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis. “As they move forward with new programs and storylines, networks must also keep an eye towards diversity and strive to include significant transgender content comparable to those efforts being made by their online competitors, such as Netflix’s Orange is the New Black and Amazon’s Transparent.”

You can read the full GLAAD reports by clicking here.

In Cardiff preparations are concluding for this year’s Iris Prize Festival, the world’s largest LGBT Short Film prize, which runs from October 8th-12th. The year the festival is expanding this year with Jury members increasing from 10 to 30 – presenting 6 awards including the new Best British Short sponsored by Pinewood Studios and the Iris Prize sponsored by the Michael Bishop Foundation.

The number of feature length movies presented over the course of the fest is also doubling to 16.

Festival Chair Andrew Pierce comments, “I always think of Iris as family. Granted a rather bigger family today than we knew back in 2007 when the world’s finest LGBT filmmakers gathered in Cardiff for the first time. We had 7 feature films as part of our inaugural programme, this year we have 16. In 2007 we had 5 programmes of short films, this year we have 10. There is no denying that our family is getting bigger.”

Film directors, producers, writers and actors from all four corners of the globe will be attending the five day festival in Cardiff. Former International model Hen Yanni, will be introducing the screening of Melting Away, for which she received many awards for her portrayal of a Trans person in Israel’s first feature film to deal with a Trans story. Cheryl Dunye is shortlisted for the first time for her short film Black Is Blue and travels from the US to attend the screening.

European films are well represented with seven making the programme including the German offering, The Samurai by former Iris Prize winner Till Kleinert. Following its sell-out screenings at FrightFest, the annual London horror festival, Total Film commented, “The Samurai is one of the most daring and stylish films we’ve caught at FrightFest.” Till Kleinert and his lead actor Michel Diercks will be in Cardiff for the screenings.

As a counterbalance to the horror the festival organisers are delighted to be screening The Way He Looks by another Iris Prize winner, Daniel Ribiero from Brazil, who will be attending the screening in Cardiff. The film is a feature length version of his popular 2011 Iris Prize winning short about a blind boy who falls in love with the new boy in class. The screening in Cardiff follows the London Film Festival premiere, proving the film has mainstream cross-over appeal.

“The Iris family is growing and this year we will have 4 previous winners join us in Cardiff. Till from Germany and Daniel from Brazil return with new feature films as they dominate the world film festival circuit. We also have the company of Tim Marshall, our winner from 2013 who has just finished filming Followers, his new Iris Prize funded short film. And if that was not enough we are also delighted to welcome back Eldar Rapaport (Iris Prize winner 2009) who will chair the Best Feature Film Jury,” added Andrew Pierce.

The 2014 Festival will have 5 independent juries – presenting 6 awards (listed below). The 10 strong Iris Prize jury is chaired by Sara Sugarman, who attends the festival for the first time. The jury members are all individuals who are at the top of their game and have generously given their time to support Iris.

The on-line box office is open and there is still time to organise your trip to Cardiff to experience what everybody is talking about!  http://irisprize.ticketsource.co.uk/

The full programme can be found here: WWW.IRISPRIZE.ORG

Take a look below at a montage of this years Iris Prize nominated movies: [Read more…]