WA filmmakers Nathan Keene and Will Faulkner walked off with the top prize in this year’s Mardi Gras Film Festival’s short film competition, My Queer Career.

Keene and Faulkners’ film, Disarm, beat 7 other finalists to walk away with the $3000 prize money, and automatic entry into the prestigious international Iris Prize Festival based in Cardiff, Wales, the UK’s biggest film festival.

Keene and Faulkner co-wrote the script following a series of discussions that began in September 2008, with filming for the 17 minute long film taking place over two days in June 2009.

The film was then rushed through editing to meet the November deadline for the competition.

According to Faulkner the win came as a surprise as the pair ‘weren’t really sure what the judges were looking for’.

Faulkner told OUTinPerth the film ‘stemmed from our views on the gay scene and the gay community and the way different men react to each other, and communicate and have relationships.

‘The film is about how men can put up a front of masculinity, how it can sort of tone down and mask their femininity to appear more like what they think is a real man,’ he said.

‘Our story is about a young guy who meets an older guy through the internet. He goes to the hotel room but they have a complication because they both want dominance, there’s that raw masculinity there that turns into a fight, but after the fight they have a conversation and it’s through the conversation that the different parts of their life come out.

‘We really wanted to make a film that people thought about and it stayed with them a few days after. That let people talk and discuss this issue…’

WA audiences can see Disarm as part of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival films to be screened in Perth in April by events company Gay in WA.

Zoe Carter