Sridhar Rangayan
Sridhar Rangayan, festival director of KASHISH Mumbai International Queer Film Festival is on the Jury this year for Iris Prize Festival which awards the highest cash award of £25,000 for LGBT films in the world.
A 10 member strong jury comprised of festival directors, filmmakers and actors from India, Australia, Ireland and UK decides on the winner. The jury, chaired by Kirsten Schaffer the Executive Director at Outfest, Los Angeles includes Sridhar Rangayan, festival director of KASHISH Mumbai International Queer Film Festival.
“I am indeed proud and honoured to be part of such an eminent Jury. It definitely is a big onus on us to decide the winner, since it is the biggest LGBT film cash award,” said Rangayan, who is currently screening his film at the Nuremberg Human Rights Film Festival.
30 LGBT short films from around the world compete for the Iris Prize with a diversity of stories – from sexy and erotic to painful and distressing. One of the films competing is an Indian entry – ‘Urmi’ by Jehangir Jani, which won the Best Indian Narrative Short Award at KASHISH 2013.
The £25,000 Iris Prize is supported by The Michael Bishop Foundation and will be announced during the Iris Awards presented by Amy Lamé on Sunday 13 October 2013 in Cardiff. The Iris Prize Festival will also host a Producers Forum which will focus on the latest issues affecting low budget film making addressing issues of funding, distribution and exhibition.
“The Producers Forum offers filmmakers from the UK a chance to interact with professionals from all four corners of the globe in a friendly but business-like manner. Expanding the Producers Forum beyond gay and lesbian production has been a natural and easy process. 99% of business issues affecting LGBT film content is relevant to anybody working in film and TV today,” said Berwyn Rowlands, festival director of Iris Prize Festival.
“This indeed is a great opportunity for fledgling filmmakers, and crowdfunding definitely is the new way forward to finance short and independent films. It also shows the support by the community and builds a large audience. We have seen this with the crowdfunding campaign we have carried out for the past two years to support KASHISH. While we have raised gap funding through this, it has built us a lot of goodwill and participation,”said Rangayan. KASHISH crowdfunding was one of the most successful campaigns by Wishberry, a mainstream crowdfunding platform.
Here’s montage of the shorts:
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