Over the next few weeks we’ll be bringing you looks at some of the short films that are up for this year’s Iris Prize, the world’s largest international gay and lesbian short film prize which takes place in Cardiff, Wales in October. Last week we brought the newly announced list of films that are due to compete, as well as the trailer for one of the shorts, I Am Syd Stone.
Now we have a ‘making of…’ featurette for The Phallometer, which comes from Cibrail and The Passenger director Tor Iben, as well as the company behind the comedy Men To Kiss.
Here’s the short film’s synopsis: ‘A refugee is taken into custody at an open border crossing. During the interrogation, he admits to being gay and is subjected to an absurd entry examination, a so-called phallometric test. The story is based on facts.’
In case you were wondering, a phallometric test involves strapping a device to a man’s penis and then measuring how excited it gets when the subject is shown sexual material. Although it has always been controversial, since it was invented in the 1950s its been used in some countries to try and scientifically prove things such as whether somebody really is gay. For example it’s been used when somebody tries to claim asylum due to their sexuality, or if they say they can’t go into the military because they’re gay.
Frank Christian Marx, the actor and owner of the company behind The Phallometer, Ente Kross Film, tells us of the firm’s plans, “Our second film and first short film The Phallometer was just announced to be in the short list for the Iris Prize and we’re right now in the pre-production for our second feature film, Locked up, which we´re shooting in October… It will be a gay psychothriller, which is quiet rare in the LGBT genre I guess.”
The Iris Prize Festival takes places October 8th – 12th in Cardiff. [Read more…]
The James Franco produced and Christina Voros directed Kink debuted back in January 2013 at Sundance, but it’s taken a while to get to a larger audience. However it should hopefully be reaching a wider audience soon.
Josh Boone made his name with the character-based films Stuck In Love and the recent hit Fault In Our Stars, but he’s already shown he’s keen to get stuck into genre fare by signing on to direct a movie version of Stephen King’s The Stand.
When we saw Bruno & Earlene Go To Vegas at last year’s Iris Prize festival, we loved it, as you can tell from 
Tired of being invisible in a bland marriage, Emma moves in with her son Elliot, in his downtown LA loft. Elliot is a chef at a lackluster Chinese restaurant facing foreclosure. Also he’s gay – and Emma’s distaste and denial over this has made strangers of mother and son.
The Expendables 3 is the type of testosterone-heavy, all-guns-blazing action film that you wouldn’t expect would have much time for a gay couple – except maybe to shoot them for not being manly enough (and I’m not joking, it happened quite a lot in 1970s and 1980s films).
J.C. Calciano, the man behind Steam Room Stories and the films Is It Just Me? and eCupid, is back with The 10 Year Plan, a new gay-themed rom-com that’s currently doing the festival circuit (to some acclaim) and should be reaching DVD around Valentine’s Day 2015.
The documentary Corpus Christi, first debuted at film festivals back in 2012. It’s taken a while but now a US DVD and VoD release has been set, with Breaking Glass Pictures bringing it out on October 14th.
It seems Charlie Carver can’t get enough of playing gay characters on screen. In Teen Wolf he was Ethan, who got involved in a relationship with the openly gay Danny, and now it seems he’ll be having an all-male threesome in Michael, the James Franco starring movie that tells the real-life story of Michael Glatze, who went from LGBT activist to ex-gay poster boy.
When Neon Trees lead singer Tyler Glenn came out earlier this year, he joined the ranks of openly gay people who grew up in the Mormon faith. Now he wants to help share the stories of people like him, as he’s teamed up with fellow gay Mormon Kendall Wilcox to launch a