Never Hollowed By The Stare

Featuring LGBT short films I found around the interwebz a.k.a Youtube. Okay sucky intro, but yeah, that’s it.

It’s a family affair, and Rory (Ben Walsh) is on familiar ground. He knows each burly man who comes in for a mid-dance piss break, and his dad is playing the fiddle in the band. But Dan (Joe Sefton), his visiting boyfriend, couldn’t be further out of place – and there’s something Rory hasn’t told him. Once Rory manages to coax him out the cubicle, previously unaddressed questions over masculinity and communication are brought to the fore and their conversation unfurls into a flaming row, paused at regular intervals by urinating family friends, and incongruously underscored throughout by the rising ceilidh music coming through the wall.

At first I was wondering why this won awards because this is just two blokes and their drama. The film had me going “you have every right to be angry, English boy” and just like that, it shifted to “let’s go hug poor Scots boy“.

Now I know.

Featuring LGBT short films I found around the interwebz a.k.a Youtube. Okay sucky intro, but yeah, that’s it.

James leads a lonely life in a luxurious castle in which his parents run a hotel. He never goes out with friends, spends his spare time in his room and peeks at the hotel’s guests out of boredom. Generally hides in his room, to stay away from his wannabe-controlling mother, who has no insight in the life of her son, James is forced outside when a group of handsome Swedish soccer players staying at the hotel capture his interest. When he finds one of the boys injured at the hotel’s swimming pool, James offers his help and smuggles the boy into his room and locks the door. Locked up with a strange boy in his own room, James experiences the complexity of his own sexual feelings and insecurities for the first time.

WATER | VATTNET is a short coming-of-age film about family, loneliness and sexual identity. It examines the confusing period of adolescence and the first homosexual feelings of a young boy in a refreshing, open and stylish way.