Nathan Hughes
Nathan’s dramas and documentaries aim to affirm essential human values and empower people to resist toxic narratives that stand in the way of socio-ecological justice. His work demonstrates a distinctive cinematic and/or artistic vision (Encounters Festival) and has been supported by the RIFF Talent Lab, the London Comedy Film Festival and the London Screenwriter’s Festival. He has mentored young screenwriters to develop media resources to combat ideological conditioning and radicalisation, and has produced site-specific theatre pieces with fluid configurations of people, places and technologies. He has exhibited speculative fiction and evocative promotions at international arts symposiums (ISEA, US & China CHI, Zebra Poetry Film Festival, AHRC’s Research in Film Awards), and has engaged diverse audiences through innovative collaborations with (BBC, NESTA, The National Trust).
Mourning Glory dissects the uses and abuses of family, friendship and porn as grief therapy, revealing how we configure (and disfigure) identity in relation to place, and why you can take the girls and boys out of Wales, but you can’t take Wales out of the girls and boys.
Mourning Glory
LIM | Less is More 2020
MOURNING GLORY is a poignant comedy about the uses and abuses of amateur porn as grief therapy. Stuck in his dreary Welsh hometown after his mother’s death, AL, an emotionally constipated porn addict, is at year zero of his existence. MEG, a cheeky outsider, plans to escape the town by following her idol, Welsh porn star Gail Maze, to a glamorous new life in LA. She needs a steamy scene to attract the adult industry, but her natural spermatozoid face doesn’t fit with the latter’s toxic parody of sexuality. In her darkest hour, AL turns to MUFF, a small-time filmmaker, but he wants to make a film about the story of his new biological mother, who saved him from a clifftop fall when he was still a foetus. MEG negotiates a deal to play MUFF’s suicidal teenage mother if he shoots her sex scene. When MUFF casts AL to co-star with MEG, three wounded individuals learn that making (bad) amateur porn is paradoxically therapeutic and forces them to confront their authentic selves.