Frameline48 is over, and all the blogging is done, so here are some stats to tuck it all in bed until next time.
I reviewed 52 feature-length programs and 9 programs of shorts (not counting the streaming program that is a compilation of two other shorts programs) with 56 short films. That is a total of 108 films. By my count, I missed 13 feature-length films and 2 shorts programs, missing out on 9 short films. If you only count films that came out in 2023 and 2024, those numbers drop to 9 features and 4 shorts. By those numbers, I saw 85% of the features and 93% of the shorts, so I wasn’t far off when I said I was going to see “as many films as humanly possible — and then some.”
I used the poop emoji (“really bad”) only three times this year, one feature and two shorts, plus three features and 3 shorts that got a thumbs down. (Of course, one of those won a juried award.) I used the sparkle heart emoji (“must see”) 25 times. I think that’s a pretty good ratio.
If you add in the numbers from the Queer Women of Color Film Festival earlier in June, I saw a total of 53 feature-length films and 104 shorts over the course of one month.
And yet… I somehow managed to miss both of the audience favorites, best narrative feature and best documentary feature. I did see all of the films that won juried awards, and all but one of the honorable mentions, although in several cases I didn’t grok what the juries saw in those films. I’m going to see if I can contact the filmmakers or their publicists and get a screener for those audience winners, or maybe I’ll just wait for them to turn up in the theater or streaming.