So So Gay
It’s exactly one month until the Iris Prize Festival opens in the Welsh capital of Cardiff, and boy, does it look exciting and have we got news for you.
The montage of all thirty films competing for the £25,000 prize has been released, featuring the music of Bernard Kane who was specially commissioned by the festival to score. The selection looks as diverse and tantalising as ever and we can’t wait to watch them all come October.
It’s great to see the likes of What Are You Looking At, which features on Peccadillo Picture’s Boys on Film: Cruel Britannia DVD, to which we gave a full five stars, and also X-WHY, which has already been featured at this year’s London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival.
Also, the festival has proudly announced that Lisa Power, Policy Director of Terrence Higgins Trust is chairing the judging panel. She is yet another tremendous and important figure to offer their support of the festival following on from Mary FitzPatrick’s chair last year.
But as much as the shorts dominate the festival, the programme of feature films is also not to be forgotten, especially as these films are all European or UK premieres. Last year saw films Going Down in LA-LA Land, August, and Spork go onto successful releases since. Opening the festival is Yossi, a sequel to the success that was Yossi and Jager, about a closeted workaholic doctor in Tel Aviv still struggling to move on from the death of his previous lover. But probably the most interesting of the line-ups is Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same, where extraterrersital mayhem and lady love collide in this off the wall comedy tipped to be something of a cult as it takes pride of place by closing the festival. Screening alongside this is also Little Man, the follow-up film made by the 2009 winner and director of August, Eldar Rappaport with the £25,000 prize money awarded by the festival. He follows 2008′s winner Till Kleinert and his atmospheric Boys Village, made with his winnings, which was very well received at our The Best of the Iris Prize Festival screening in July.
The box office is already open for this year’s festival, and with the length and breadth of the festival being extended this year there are plenty of goodies to treat yourself to. If you don’t quite have the time to sit through all 30 competing shorts there’s always the Best of Iris 2012, a selection from the panel of the winners and notable films from the competition on 14 October. Also, there’s a chance to catch the Best of Iris Feature Film 2012, chosen by the Friends of Iris on the same day.
Indeed, So So Gay will be there throughout the entire festival giving you the lowdown as official media partners on the feature films and competiting shorts, as well as having tête-a-têtes with some of the creative talent that will be there. We hope you’re looking forward to the festival as much as we are!
The Iris Prize Festival 2012 runs from 10-14 October 2012 in Cardiff. To book tickets for the festival and to find out more information visit www.irisprize.org.
Featured image: Still from Coffee & Pie, one of this year’s competing shorts. Photograph: Courtesy of Iris Prize Festival 2012.
