Harry Does Iris

Looking squiffy after free wine.

We asked that lovely young man, Harry Clayton-Wright, to go to Cardiff and write about the Iris Film Festival. And so he did. Here’s what he wrote:

The Iris Prize is an international gay and lesbian short film festival, that has annually taken place in Cardiff since 2007. The winner takes home a £25000 prize to fund their next project. This year, I attended. As a gay, a lover of short films, festivals and a wearer of shorts, it felt like a homecoming.

Arriving on Wednesday morning to the beautiful city of Cardiff and knowing little, if any Welsh, I managed to make my way to the car park. This was a huge achievement in itself. Chapter Arts Centre was the first port of call for Fit, a film by Rikki Beadle-Blair. Originally a play commissioned by Queer Up North and Stonewall, Fit has played to thousands of school children around the country to stamp out homophobic bullying. It was made into a feature film to be distributed as a DVD in schools. From a personal viewpoint, it was great to see how gay characters are being portrayed in this educational tool and the reaction from the audience, which included students from local schools, was really strong. Following a Q&A session afterwards, I went and ate pizza and some amazing curly fries. After a debate about women in film, Kick Off, the second Rikki Beadle-Blair film of the day and the world premiere was shown to a packed audience of mostly men, who thoroughly enjoyed the copious amounts of male torso on screen. Kick Off is a film about a gay five-a-side football team. Most of the cast were in attendance for the Q&A session afterwards. Following a beverage, I fell directly into bed. Who knew sitting down was so tiring?!

Thursday morning and everyone met at Cineworld where the short films were shown. After a meet and greet session, it was straight into the first set of shorts. The first four played together beautifully. We had themes of incest, love and with the film Broken Hart, a gay, black and white silent movie, which was the comic relief from people falling out of love and killing themselves. After amazing tiramasu (yes, I do remember everything I ate) we went back for shorts programme number two, which featured one of my favourite films from the festival, The Armoire. This was a highly stylised and magnificently dark film about a game of hide and seek that leads to a boy going missing.

The programme also had other great films The Queen, about a boy who creates his own prom night at his parents dry cleaners and Tools 4 Fools, an infomercial selling used pleasure items. There was a break to prepare us for shorts programme number three which had more nudity than you could shake a stick at.  Before we began, we had a warning that there would be scenes of an explicit nature, which only excited the audience more. Cannibals, a 19 minute Spanish film set on a cruising ground used a Smack My Bitch Up style of camerawork, which allowed us to see some… interesting sights and lots of flesh. It was a tad too long for me, but remained a talking point that evening. My favourite of that bunch was a film called Gayby. A great comic film about a straight woman and a gay man who decide to have a baby the old fashioned way.

With the shorts over for the day, we had the feature film Is It Just Me? to look forward to and everyone sat back to enjoy this frustratingly enjoyable film. A gay comedy of errors with Nicholas Downs who sat and talked afterwards about the film and his experiences in the industry. After that a glass of wine in a bar called 4Play, not staying out too late to save myself for the Friday night festivities.

It was clear on Friday morning that everyone had enjoyed their evening, with hangovers rife and some still drunk, programme number four had a great blend of films to start the day. Two films that stood out were At Night I Was Beautiful which interspersed interview, scenes and beautiful cinematography to tell the story of an NYU Tisch actor reflecting on his experience of working as a male prostitute in New York, capturing character superbly and also Engayging Lives, a documentary about the lives of gay men in Mumbai showing the fight they face for equality. After a pizza brunch (and sneaky cake), we were ready for programme number five which contained the films You Can’t Curry Love about a man from Australia who moves to London, who then moves to India with work and who then falls in love. Mosa, which deals with “corrective rape” in South Africa and Watch Over Me, a film about a gay vampire.

Before the final shorts of the festival, there was the launch of the new Peccadillo Pictures DVD, Boys On Film: Candy Boy. This was a party after my own heart that had wine served from a balloon decorated party cup, bubble machines and sweets galore. With everyone slightly inebriated after the wine consumption we had shorts programme number six, which gave us The Samaritan, a beautifully shot film about an illegal immigrant who starts living with a lonely gay man that had some really wonderful and interesting moments, complete with some truly stunning visuals. With the final set of shorts complete, we made our way over to St David’s for the launch of the pink portrait collection with more wine (hence the squiffy picture) and a gay men’s choir too, there was the lovely announcement and great news that the UK Film Council will be funding next years Iris Prize. Hurray! After that it was back to Cineworld for the Friday night feature and UK premiere of Bear City, which went down a treat with the audience.

Friday night at Iris meant one thing though… It was Hells Bent time! A night at Cardiff Arts Institute that allowed me to get extremely drunk, dance like a fool and would give me the mother of all hangovers.

Unfortunately, I had to miss Saturday’s proceedings. I was on a train for most of it with the worst head EVER and I wonder if I’d have made it through anyway. I was rough. But Saturday saw the final feature films and the evening ceremony which  saw the film My Friend From Faro win the feature prize of £1000 and Mosa win the Best UK Short. The winner of the festival and £25000 was unveiled to be The Samaritan. The jury said of the film “The Samaritan demonstrated deft and nuanced filmmaking: it told such a big, urgent story of real relevance in a small film.”

I had the most bloody fantastic time at Iris, with the most amazing hospitality from everyone involved. If you’re a lover of cinema and you want to see films that are international, different and that excite and inspire, I’d highly recommend you visit the festival next year. DO IT!