Broken hearts and burnt out staff: was this to be the finale? The five day long festival was coming to a grand close, having already achieved its promise of being bigger and better than ever before. The toll of late night partying was evident on the faces of the filmmakers: the social side of the Iris Prize Festival was worth the flight over for many of those coming from far afield. There was gossip and speculation aplenty as the champagne reception in Cardiff’s Park Inn Hotel got the festival spirit flowing again. The staff and organisers had somehow tapped into hidden reserves of energy, with the media buzz still electric and the day running silky smooth. [Read more…]
Aussie Filmmaker Grant Scicluna Takes The Iris Prize For The Wilding
The Iris Prize Festival in Cardiff is over for another year (expect more coverage from us in the next few days, looking at what went on), and the winner of the main awards has been announced. The Iris Prize is notable for being the largest LGBT short film prize in the world, offering the winner not just a pat on the back, but also support and funding for their next short film (worth £25,000).
At a reception hosted by comedienne Amy Lame, the winning short – picked from the 31 films on the shortlist – was announced as The Wilding, directed by Australia’s Grant Scicluna. The short follows a juvenile inmate called Malcolm who is offered a chance at parole, who becomes torn between his chance for freedom and protecting the one he loves – his cellmate Tye.
Iris Prize jury chair Lisa Power commented, “The Wilding was wonderfully self-assured. It took a familiar trope and turned it into an extraordinary story. This was a special film which demanded attention and every which way we counted the votes and considered our options The Wilding came out on top.”
The other winners at the ceremony were:
• A Stable for Disabled Horses (directed by Fabio Youniss) – Best UK Short
• Sex of Angels (directed by Xavier Villaverde) – Iris Prize Best Feature Award
• Ohad Knoller (Yossi in Yossi) Best Actor in a Feature
• Kristina Valada-Viars (Molly in Molly’s Girl) Best Actress in a Feature
Yeah Kowalski directed by Evan Roberts (USA) and These Empty Streets directed by Jarrah Gurrie (Australia) were highly commended by the jury.
As well as the shorts, the five day festival also included eight of the latest gay and lesbian feature films, which all enjoyed their UK premieres at the festival. These movies included Yossi, Gayby, Sex Of Angels and Joshua Tree 1951: A Portrait Of James Dean.
Now it’s on to next year’s festival!
Iris Prize Festival Opening Night Film Review: Yossi
Starring: Ohad Knoller, Lior Ashkenazi, Oz Zehavi, Orly Silbersatz Banai, Ola Schur
Director: Eytan Fox
Running Time: 84 mins
Director: Eytan Fox
Running Time: 84 mins
Yossi, sequel to director Eytan Fox’s 2002 movie Yossi and Jagger, is a story of recovery. The eponymous character, played superbly by Ohad Knoller, is a workaholic doctor struggling to find meaning in life and love in Tel Aviv, having lost his lover in the conflict with Lebanon.
Yossi is faced with the demons of loneliness and desperation, compounded by his age and weight being pushed well past their ‘best before’. Unable to address his sexuality with his work colleagues, he must stave off advances from an amorous nurse, and extricate himself from compromising nights out with a fellow doctor; one who is determined to show Yossi a good time, albeit with women. All the while he toes the line of a more seedy gay-scene. [Read more…]
Iris Prize Festival – First Night Report
The Iris Prize Festival, the world’s largest LGBT-themed short film prize, has kicked off in Cardiff, and we’re going to be reporting from the event which runs October 10th-14th. The festival shows a mix of shorts and feature films, ending with the Iris Prize, where one lucky filmmaker is given funding and support for their next short film.
The first night opened with reminiscing screening of last year’s winning short, I Don’t Want To Go Back Alone. The Iris Prize team has promised to ‘step it up a notch’ this year, and they seem bent on delivering just that.
The Iris Prize Festival is now in its sixth year, and the two films opening the festival show just how far gay and lesbian film-making has come in a short space of time. Daniel Ribeiro’s critically acclaimed short was followed by Yossi, the highly anticipated follow up to Eytan Fox’s Yossi and Jagger. One of the film’s stars, Oz Zehavi, was there to open the screening and shed some light into the film industry in Israel.
With the caliber of films shown on the first night, the excitement began to buzz. In lavish surroundings the crowd was treated to the premiere rendition of ‘Iris’, a piece composed by Bernard Kaye especially for the festival.
The night ended with cocktails and Lady Gaga covers by a string quartet. Gauging the atmosphere and conversation from the night, it seems everyone is looking forward to getting stuck into four more days of great films.
We’ll be bringing you more reviews and coverage of the festival over the next few days.
For more info on the shorts screening and in contention for this year’s prize, click here.
Writer: Adrian Naik
Sacha Baron Cohen Takes On The Lesbian
A story has been doing the round recently about Hong Kong billionaire Cecil Chao, who’s offered a hefty $65 million reward to any man who marries his daughter, even though she’s a lesbian who lives in France with her wife (and has even has the relationship blessed by a French church).
Sacha Baron Cohen thinks this is prime material for a comedy, as Variety reports he’s teamed up with Paramount to produce and potentially star in a movie about it, currently called The Lesbian.
One of the more interesting things about the tale is that Cecil Chao has never even married himself, so it’s not like he’s an avid believer in the institution, it appears he just doesn’t want his offspring to be gay. It’s also known that despite the massive dowry, his daughter remains on good terms with him. It is believed that Sacha Baron Cohen is looking to play the billionaire father, so it’s likely there’ll be some racial changes from real life to the movie.
The film is in the very early stages at the moment, as no screenwriter has yet been attached. It is of course not Cohen’s first brush with gay-themed films, as he starred as the flamboyantly homosexual Bruno in the movie of the same name.
Sinister (Cinema)
Starring: Ethan Hawke, Juliet Rylance, Fred Dalton Thompson, James Ransom, Michael Hall D’Addario
Director: Scott Derrickson
Running Time: 110 mins
Certificate: 15
Release Date: October 5th 2012
Director: Scott Derrickson
Running Time: 110 mins
Certificate: 15
Release Date: October 5th 2012
Sinister should be rubbish. The plot is rather silly, numerous things happen that make little sense (and not just because of supernatural shenanigans), and it has a title so generic its feels like they simple couldn’t be assed. However thanks to some excellent make-you-jump moments, a mystery plot that holds enough interest to keep you watching and a creepy atmosphere, it’s a surprisingly effective chiller.
Ethan Hawke plays Ellison Oswalt, a writer of true-crime books who moves his family to a small town to investigate the murder of four members of a family, and the disappearance of a small girl, for which no perpetrator has ever been found. What he hasn’t told his wife and kids is that the house they’ve moved into is the one where the family were hung from a tree in the backyard. [Read more…]
Oliver Hermanus Interview: Chatting With The Director Of Beauty
Beauty, or Skoonheid as it’s known in its native South Africa, takes a dark look at how mentally scarring sexual repression can be, and does so in an excellently compelling and disturbing way (you can read our review here).
After winning the Queer Palm Award at the Cannes Film Festival in 2011 and being shortlisted as the South African entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 84th Academy Awards, Beauty will be released on DVD in the UK on October 8th.
We got to catch up with the writer and director of the film, Oliver Hermanus, to find out his thoughts of the film, his inspiration and what he will be getting up to next in the world of film. [Read more…]
The Guilt Trip Trailer – Barbra Streisand and Seth Rogen are mother and son
Barbra Streisand hasn’t taken a starring role in a movie since The Mirror Has Two Faces in 1996 (although there were of course her Fockers appearances), but she’s coming back for The Guilt Trip, starring alongside Seth Rogen. Here’s the synopsis: ‘Andy Brewster (Rogen) is about to embark on the road trip of a lifetime, and who better to accompany him than his overbearing mother Joyce (Streisand). After deciding to start his adventure with a quick visit at mom’s, Andy is guilted into bringing her along for the ride. Across 3,000 miles of ever-changing landscape, he is constantly aggravated by her antics, but over time he comes to realize that their lives have more in common than he originally thought. His mothers advice might end up being exactly what he needs. The movie, from Proposal helmer Anne Fletcher, is due out in the UK on February 22nd, 2013.
The Lone Ranger Trailer & Poster
The first trailer for The Lone Ranger has shown up online, but unfortunately at the moment the embed we have of it isn’t that great (we’ll hopefully be able to remedy that soon). The trailer premiered on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, although the embed comes from CBM. It’s interesting that the trailer plays up the action and intrigue, rather than the humour and wild west setting. Expect to see a lot more in the run up to the July 2013 release of the movie.
Here’s the synopsis: ‘From producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Gore Verbinski, the filmmaking team behind the blockbuster “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise, comes Disney/Jerry Bruckheimer Films’ “The Lone Ranger,” a thrilling adventure infused with action and humor, in which the famed masked hero is brought to life through new eyes.Native American spirit warrior Tonto (Johnny Depp) recounts the untold tales that transformed John Reid (Armie Hammer), a man of the law, into a legend of justice—taking the audience on a runaway train of epic surprises and humorous friction as the two unlikely heroes must learn to work together and fight against greed and corruption.’
Take a look at the new poster below.
Win A Signed Sinister Quad Poster!
The producer of “Insidious” and “Paranormal Activity” delivers a chilling horror like no other with a movie that is being hotly tipped as the most effective edge-of-your-seat cinematic experience of the year.
Sinister (Momentum Pictures) is out at UK cinemas on Friday 5th October. And we’ve got a quad poster for the film, signed by the movie’s co-writer C. Robert Cargill to give away!
Desperately in need of a best seller to revive his struggling career, true crime writer Ellison (Ethan Hawke), moves his family to the scene of his most recent story; the unsolved, gruesome murder of a loving, happy suburban family.
Shunned by the local community and strained by his obligations to his family, the discovery of a batch of home movies in the attic offers Ellison shocking proof to the crime he is investigating. Ellison notices the same unidentified figure appearing in each of the 8mm films, leaving him convinced that all the incidents are linked by a truly bizarre connection. As his investigations uncover the terrifying truth he starts to lose his grip on reality and it soon becomes clear that he is placing his own family in harm’s way. [Read more…]
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