Eye on the World - Iris Prize 2011

Since 2007, Cardiff has played host to the Iris Prize Film Festival,

the only major international film festival staged in Wales.

In early October, film-makers from all over the globe

descend on Cardiff to compete for one of the largest short film awards in the world.

The Iris Prize was created by Berwyn Rowlands.

Well, Iris was created in 2006

and here we are, the fifth birthday.

It is LGBT -

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender,

but we wanted to make sure

that our audience was as wide an audience as possible.

We screen feature films,

we have talks and debates about the industry, about sexuality.

But, at its core, we have the Iris Prize.

The 30 short films selected from around the world

represent the best of the best,

but only one will win the Iris Prize.

That film-maker will return with £25,000

to make their short film here in Wales.

As Iris grows in the way that she is able to support film-makers,

I think that's also saying something about the city.

The fact that you have film-makers

who talk about Sydney, San Francisco

and Cardiff in the same breath

is quite amazing,

and I think it's an indication of where Cardiff is going

on this fantastic journey with Iris.

The Iris Prize is open to all film-makers,

but their entry must reflect, in some way,

experiences and perspectives

from the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities.

In 2011, 15 nations were represented at Iris,

and nearly 3,500 people turned up to see

eight feature-length films and 30 shorts.

It's the short films that are the focus of the Iris Prize.

Welcome to the opening of the fifth Iris Prize Festival.

APPLAUSE

To me, the value of the short film

is that within two, three, ten, 15 minutes,

you can be taken on quite an incredible journey.

It takes great skill, I think, for a film-maker

to take an audience on that journey as well

in such a short space of time.

And also, within those films, quite often you'll see

a lot of innovative film work and people taking risks.

THEY SING

Also, in this sort of medium you can

say something very pointed

and not really give a shit about

the process of weaving a story.

Sometimes you just want to say something.

You just want to say, "Hey look, this is how I see it, this is the way it is. Boom!"

THEY SING

Subject matter in the films have certainly changed.

I think if you looked at what we had five years ago,

you would see a lot more films about coming out stories,

because those were still a kind of valid story to tell

in these countries, in Britain, in Western Europe.

I think what you're seeing now is a move away from that,

so you're seeing stories about, for example, gay parenting,

you're seeing stories that have, that aren't particularly about sexuality,

they just have gay protagonists.

And so, yeah, I think it's definitely moving more towards

a kind of wider range of stories in a way.

'I like to think any shame I feel is residual.

'But when it comes to the kids and stuff,

'I think I go into kind of protective mode,

'that I don't want them to inherit any of that residual shame.'

The focus is narrow in the sense that it's about gay and lesbian film-making,

but it's broadened by the fact that they're from all over the world.

And I think those are the most successful kind of festivals for me,

where you've got a focus

but you've got a breadth of experience that comes through.

My name is Tamer Ruggli. I'm from Switzerland.

I'm 25 years old

and the short film I am here with is called Cappuccino.

Cappuccino is a sarcastic romantic comedy of coming of age

of a teen, a 16-year-old boy.

And during the film, the focus goes more

on to the mother and son relationship.

Well, Cappuccino has been in all the big LGBT festivals

all over the world.

And I'm very happy, actually, that it got out of the LGBT circus

and went to the Seattle International Film Festival

or the Palm Springs Short Fest.

So that's also good that the film is more universal

than just for the gay audience.

My name's Jon Stanford.

I'm from Shropshire.

I'm currently working as a freelance director and camera operator,

and my short film is called Lost Tracks.

Lost Tracks is my graduation film from the London Film School.

It was shot entirely in South Shropshire on location

for a budget of around £6,000,

half of which came from the Film School

and the other half was from my own pocket money.

You don't think you're going to miss it?

I've just had enough.

My friends are all wasters.

I can't stand my dad.

He acts as if my mum never existed.

I just...need to get away.

'Screening the film yesterday was an exciting process.

'It's great to be in a packed room when your film's being screened

'cos that's, for me, that's what it's all about - is showing

'your work to an audience once all the hard work has been achieved.'

My name is Mitsuyo Miyazaki.

I am originally from Osaka in Japan

but currently I live in Los Angeles, California,

and I'm here to present my film, Tsuyako.

I was a writer, producer, director.

The inspiration came from an old

photograph of my grandmother

in her 20s, and she was with a woman

that I'd never met before and don't know,

but the picture spoke so much of a love

that I decided to write the story.

Been to Tokyo Short Shorts Film Festival in Asia.

We went to then Palm Springs.

And then we travelled to Outfest

and after that we went to Mexico.

From that, we got a qualified for Oscar

so we submitted to Oscar a few weeks ago,

and I'm waiting to hear back.

How much do I want to win the Iris?

I want to win the Iris so I can come back.

It would be an honour to win something

as it hasn't won anything yet.

And also an insurance that you can make something out of this money

and create something new.

It would be great to get some recognition for the hard work

that myself and all the fellow film-makers who worked on it,

and it would just be a great opportunity.

Winning the Iris Prize is something very unique for the film-maker.

Most short film-makers

or young independent film-makers

have to be everything.

They have to wear every hat.

You might be the writer and the director and the producer

and the lighting and the make-up.

Iris Prize means that you can come in and just be the director.

The importance of offering such a significant award,

a life-changing award to a film-maker is just extraordinary.

Not only the money, but the support

and mentoring that that film-maker will get,

it really is, it really can be life-changing

for a film-maker to have that prize.

The Iris prize, worth £25,000,

is one of the largest short film awards,

and the festival attracts some of the world's best talent,

with previous winners already making an impact

in the highly competitive film industry.

Well, Dee Rees, who won the inaugural Iris Prize,

her first feature premiered at the Sundance Film Festival

and the distributor, Focus Features,

they picked up the film from what I understand to be a seven-figure sum.

Our second winner, Till Kleinert, well, he's been tipped for greatness

by Peccadillo Pictures, who are one of the leading distributors in the UK

and, from what I also understand,

he's secured funding for his first feature film.

They're going to go on to great success.

Iris is finding these people and it's something we're very proud of.

I'm Till Kleinert and I'm here to present tonight

a short film I wrote and directed called Boys' Village.

And my connection to Iris is that I actually won the Iris Prize

in 2008 with a film called Cowboy.

The prize of course consisted of making a new short film

here in Wales with a Welsh team,

which is Boys' Village, which I'm going to be presenting tonight.

Winning Iris personally means that I found a lot of great friends

that I stayed in contact with over the years and I think will in the future,

so I consider myself now part of the so-called Iris family.

And, professionally, it gave me the chance to shoot a film

outside of my comfort zone,

in a different country and in a different language,

so I think in itself that was a huge step forward for me

and I'm also very pleased with the result, with the film.

I think it stands very nicely in my progression as a film-maker.

Hi, can I have a cup of tea, please?

'I'm back at Chapter again.

'This is a place I have very fond memories of

'because during the production phase of the film,'

I was here every day with my team

eating goat's cheese sandwich and just trying to make it work somehow.

Yeah, it's really nice to be back.

All the people are here from the festival.

All the people I've met over the last years.

And everyone's very excited, so I'm very excited as well.

We're getting closer. People are going in.

I'm getting more and more nervous and stressed.

Yeah, I hope they will enjoy it.

I'm quite nervous to go up there and introduce it.

So, yeah, I just hope that everything will work just fine.

'The winner of the 2008 prize, Till Kleinert.'

APPLAUSE

The location's pretty much based at the Boys' Village

and it was a place that immediately sparked my curiosity

and my interests, so thank you for giving me an opportunity

to let my obsessions run rampant.

St Athan Boys' Village, in the Vale of Glamorgan, opened in 1930.

It was a village-style camp

for the sons of families in the South Wales Coalfield,

offering them a place to play and be free.

As a result of the decline in coal mining in the Welsh valleys,

it closed in the early '90s.

There's something about a place like the Boys' Village

that just fascinates me in the first place.

So you have the story of this little boy,

who is basically stuck in this place

and has no-one else to really connect to

and who is sort of longing to connect,

even though he's afraid of the other people going there.

It was very, very pleasing, very satisfying, actually.

I was very happy with the quality of the screening,

the picture quality and everything so everything went just fine, very smooth.

'And also, I think the audience reacted pretty well to it,

'so I'm very, very happy.'

And also, the film is now starting its festival tour.

It's going to Hamburg next, then Beijing.

I think it's going to Chicago as well.

So there's a lot of stuff that's coming up, and yeah,

I hope it finds its audience all over the world.

The Iris Prize jury views the short films in six screening sessions

alongside members of the public and the directors themselves.

The jury is made up of straight and gay film-makers,

authors, journalists and film enthusiasts.

Sarah Waters, award-winning and best-selling author of five novels,

including Tipping The Velvet and The Night Watch,

was on the jury in 2011.

I used to come up to Cardiff a lot as a teenager

from Pembrokeshire where I grew up,

but I haven't really been back since then and, of course,

it's changed so much in the past ten or 15 years.

It's wonderful to see it so alive as a city,

and I think Iris is a big part of that, you know.

It's just a really exciting project in its own right.

For me, as a Welsh woman, you know, and a gay woman,

it's fantastically exciting to see Iris right here in Cardiff.

Well, it's always fascinating to see a short film, you know, on its own.

They all pack a punch.

But to see a group of them together is interesting again

in a different kind of way

cos it takes you on this amazing journey, you know.

Some of the films are playful, some are lots of fun,

some are very emotional and some are really hard-hitting.

And they just give you this fantastic vista, I think,

on lesbian and gay experience.

It is saying, you know, "We're here,

"our stories count, you know, we're important."

It's crucial that lesbian and gay people hear that,

because we don't see ourselves affirmed

in the regular kind of mainstream way.

But it's also important that mainstream audiences hear that too, you know.

We don't want to live in a society that only tells one kind of story.

That's, that's an impoverished society.

You know, we want to live in a world where there's a range of stories

being made available.

And these, these films, they're just great, emotional, well-made films

in the way that any good film is, you know.

So I think their appeal is crucial for the lesbian and gay community

but it's also got a much, much broader appeal than that, too.

My name is Lucy Asten Elliott.

I've come down from Glasgow

and I am here at the Iris

with my film, James Dean.

I got a budget of three, three grand, I think it was, for my film.

It was written in summer and then, obviously,

it was all kind of last-minute at the very end that we had to film it

in November and everyone was freezing.

And, obviously, in Scotland, the sun comes up at ten

and goes down at four so we literally only had like

a couple of hours to film each day and we only had two days.

Who are you supposed to be?

I'm a tranny, aren't I?

You look like James Dean.

Don't encourage her.

We have to pick up Nana, she's not going to like this one bit.

She can piss off!

My film, James Dean, has gone a lot further

than I thought it was going to, actually.

I think it's almost in like 30 festivals now.

I'm still getting requests for it. I wasn't expecting it to go that far.

I'm Yoav Brill.

I come from Israel.

I've done a short animated film called Ishihara,

which was my graduation film

for the Bezalel Academy of Visual Arts in Jerusalem.

It's a six-minute film about colour blindness

as a metaphor for other subjects.

My name is Hong Khaou, I'm from London.

And the short film I have here is called Spring.

I wrote this film a while ago and, eventually,

I got funding by Film London.

They gave us £8,000 to make a film.

Spring, on the surface, is about this young man who meets a stranger

for S&M sex and how his life will kind of...

won't be the same after that.

It was really more about the experience of when

I first met a man and all these conflicting feelings I had.

The excitement and the fear and the anxiety of it,

and not knowing how to process all these conflicting feelings.

Winning this prize would make me very happy

because it would give me a good excuse to make another film.

This is the first thing I've written and directed.

So it would feel a bit cheeky if I was to win, to be honest.

I desperately really want to win the prize.

It would mean I get to make another short film

and, hopefully, complete this quadrilogy of seasons of short films.

Iris is good for film-makers and for the capital city of Wales.

Well, having the Iris Festival here in Cardiff for me, personally,

as a Cardiff-born, Cardiff-bred man,

is fantastic, it really is.

Growing up here in South Wales as a gay man,

there was nothing like this.

To be part of this festival is a real honour

and what it says about Wales is that Wales does equality,

it does diversity and we're not ashamed of who we are.

Cardiff, historically, has been quite a diverse city

since, you know, since the 19th century.

It's had very diverse communities here.

I think it's also a city in which there's never been a kind of gay ghetto.

So I think it's great that a very inclusive film festival

should be based in a city where inclusivity

is kind of part of the daily mixture.

What's really exciting is that not everybody may know about Cardiff,

but the Iris Prize has such an international reputation now

that people, you know, film-makers are coming

from across the world to Wales,

and what can be better than that?

It's such a great platform for us, independent film-makers,

to exhibit our work.

And for such a small country,

and Cardiff is just a small capital,

to host such a massive festival...

It's brilliant.

But also, it's important from the fundamental standpoint

of helping these film-makers.

It's a pathway to professional stability.

When more people see their films,

they're more likely to get the next job.

They're more likely to grow as a film-maker,

and I'm very proud that Iris plays a huge part in that.

RADIO: 'It is election day.

'No matter what happens at the polls, history will be made

'and, based on what we've seen so far,

'voters do want to be part of it...'

'Quit taking sides in this thing and maybe start covering

'Barack Hussein Obama the same way they covered Bush...'

'Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama's pastor...'

'California will decide whether gay marriage should be allowed

'under the state's constitution.'

One thing I've noticed is

that gay films now

aren't necessarily about being gay.

They may have gay characters in them,

but they can go to all sorts of directions,

be in all kinds of different genres,

and that's a trend, I think, in gay feature films and short films.

As if gay film-makers are possibly relaxing.

Thanks.

'Is it only gay and lesbian people that are going to come and see gay and lesbian films?

'I think probably at this festival that is true.

'That is the nature of festivals.

'But I think if you do make the effort to come and see them,'

what strikes you, of course, is that most of them are universal.

Most of them aren't dealing with being gay,

they're dealing with stories within that context.

And for me, they're the better films, you know,

because they're doing something that all films should do, really,

which is reach out to people who are maybe strangers

to the world that they're presenting.

From now on...

call me Robert.

Why?

Because that's my name.

The quality of film-making,

the universality of the stories

are simply worth seeing, as any good film would be.

And I think that's the point that we're trying to get to.

This isn't just about gay film, this is about good film.

My name is Joe Morris.

I'm the writer/director of Junk.

I'm from Sheffield originally, now living in Nottingham.

The audition process was quite long in trying to find the right boys.

I mean, it wasn't just a question of finding the right two boys,

it was trying to find the right boys that had a kind of chemistry

together on screen. And that took quite a long time to do.

Once we'd done that and once we'd started shooting,

it took about a week to shoot.

We had our ups and downs doing it but, ultimately,

I think we did a pretty good job.

Are you hungry?

I need to borrow some money.

Right.

I'm going to go away again.

Where?

OK.

My name is Andonia. I'm from Bulgaria.

I study and live in Hamburg, in Germany.

And at Iris I showed my short film,

Portrait Of A Small-town Housewife In Her Mid-fifties In 24 Frames.

My film was made in the time when I was at the Art Academy

and it cost me about a thousand euro.

And I shot it on 16-millimetre.

It would be really cool if I could win the prize.

I have a nice idea for the next short film,

but it's not the most important thing for me.

It's more important to be here

and to meet a lot of other film-makers

and see interesting films, and that's nice.

I want to win it as much as anybody else wants to win it, I guess.

If not more.

I want to win the prize that much.

17 other major lesbian and gay film festivals,

including New York, Melbourne, Toronto, Hamburg, Tel Aviv,

Mumbai and Hong Kong are linked to Iris.

And they submit films alongside individuals

and independent production companies.

Thousands of films are therefore seen before the final 30 short films

are subjected to the scrutiny of the jury,

who are locked away to discuss each entry in detail

before eventually selecting a winner.

I can see why they made it and what we refer to in TV and media.

I see why they made it but I've never heard of that kind of...

'The session is really interesting, actually,

'cos all the film-makers are from different backgrounds, different countries,

'so it's really interesting sharing views

'and seeing what they liked in a short.

And actually, you sort of then self-reflect and think,

"Oh, I kind of agree with you on that point,"

but then you have your own views.

So, collectively, coming together, sometimes

it might get a bit heated cos you're passionate and want the right film to win,

cos, you know, you are giving them the money to go out

and support mechanisms to make another film.

I've seen loads of very, very good films

and they're all very different

and it's hard to say the best one

because they can all be best in whatever way.

But my personal favourite is Hold on Tight, Irish documentary.

'If anything ever happened between me and Clodagh,

'that we should split up, it would feel like I was being ripped in half.

'She's just so much my entire life.'

'I'd like to be holding hands walking down the street with Clodagh

'when I'm, like, 70.

'That's the dream, and to have no-one stare.'

It talks to me in a very intelligent sense and it makes me think.

I think it's very much about here and now.

It's hopeful and it's also pinpointing

some very important issues about being gay today.

The one that stood out was the Japanese film, Tsuyako.

It's beautifully shot, it's gorgeously directed and filmed

and it just tells a beautiful story simply and effectively.

It's just a joy to watch.

Well, I'm sort of torn between two at the moment.

There's the film shot in Japan, Tsuyako.

But also I loved Skallamann, that's shot in Norway.

That's like a 12-minute film, absolutely,

it just, it felt something really new and refreshing.

It was a musical, it was shot really well, really good dance routines

made it look a bit like West Side Story at times.

The film that I think I liked the most is called

I Don't Want Go Back Alone.

It's a Brazilian film and I love it

because it's very simple on one level

but the characters are all complex

and it has a lot of depth.

Definitely, I Don't Want to Go Back Alone.

It was absolutely amazing.

All the films that have been shown

have been of a fantastic standard,

but this ticked all the boxes.

It was so touching,

it hit home about what it's like to be a young gay guy,

plus the fact he also was dealing with the fact he was blind as well.

It's just absolutely amazing so,

definitely, I Don't Want To Go Back Alone.

The films were all so good and so good in different ways

that it's going to be really hard, I think, to choose a winner.

There's a film called Slow about two African-American gay guys,

one of whom is blind, having this very tense, emotional encounter.

A real punch to that, very unsettling,

so I might, you know, sort of put in a word for that one.

I think it was a really we'll-made, interesting film.

Minister, can you please tell us

the winner of the 2011 Iris Prize, please?

The Iris Prize is awarded to Daniel Ribeiro

for his short I Don't Want To Go Back Alone.

APPLAUSE

Well, I'm delighted for Daniel winning.

This is his second time nominated for the Iris.

Winning this year is great.

It'll be very exciting getting an opportunity

to work with a Brazilian film-maker.

That's going to be exciting.

And the film is delightful.

The film, I think, caught people's imagination.

It's a beautiful love story. Very simple.

15-year-old blind boy

who has to deal with falling in love for the first time.

Beautiful, beautiful film.

Audiences attending the Iris Prize Film Festival

have grown dramatically since the first prize in 2007,

and it has certainly caught the imagination of international film-makers

and the film industry across the world,

as well as some influential people in the UK

who can safeguard its future.

2011, without a doubt, has been a watershed year for Iris.

We've had some exciting announcements.

We've had support from the Welsh government for the first time.

We have a new patron,

who is also going to be paying for the next short film.

This is the end of a festival and,

rather than feeling knackered and concerned about the future,

I'm feeling knackered but very excited.

The possibilities are endless.

We know that Iris works

and I think the next five years is going to be amazing.

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