Coming up in October: Iris Prize Festival - Cardiff's international gay & lesbian short prize

By Ley on Sunday, August 29, 2010 - 16:49

OK, I’ll admit it, I will freely raise my hands in the air and say that the first thing that comes to mind for me when I think of Cardiff is Torchwood (the sister show of Doctor Who) and Gwen Cooper *happy sigh*

However, right here is where I must stop these thoughts and change them to another, more rainbow-coloured attraction to the destination: the Iris Prize Festival and in particular, Cardiff's international gay and lesbian short film prize.

The Iris Prize was founded because of:

The desire to create an annual international short film prize that would recognise, celebrate and promote gay and lesbian moving image content and which would also promote tolerance, acceptance and further understanding of gay and lesbian filmmaking.

Now, if ever there was a worthy reason to set up a film festival, this most certainly would be the all inclusive version.

Usually when I see the name of a festival I can understand where it came from, or what point it is trying to make, but I have to be honest here and say that I couldn’t work this one out. So off I went to investigate.

Iris is the God of the rainbow, so with the rainbow being the universal symbol for sexual diversity, it makes complete sense for her to have her own festival. Plus, also being a messenger, she also stands as a symbol for filmmakers to express their message through storytelling.

As the winners aren’t announced until September 1^st, I thought I’d highlight a few of the shorts that have made the shortlist:

Dear Dad, Love Maria is a story of a young male-to-female transsexual writing a letter to her disapproving father the night before her gender reassignment operation. It’s a 4-minute short story animation about growing up, exploration of memories, loss of innocence and “Being who you are, even if it means losing who we love most”, from 2009 by Vince Mascoli from the USA.

Love and Other Red Spot Specials is a story about a different quest for love. In the universe, on Earth, in Australia, there is a small town. In the small town there are: 9.684 residents, one supermarket, six sets of traffic lights and one shoplifting transvestite on an extravagant quest for love.

Cecilia is beloved by the unseen Evan via a supermarket surveillance camera. But this one-sided romance won't satisfy Cecilia for long. The story is a 5-minute short from 2008 by Australian director Lauren Anderson.