Cross-reference: films reviewed in Frameline43

The list below shows all the films reviewed in this blog for Frameline43. Foreign-language films are listed with the English title and with the foreign title. The symbols before the title indicate my rating (from best to worst, 💖👍👌😐🙄👎🏼🤮💩) and the première status, and the link is to my full review. Titles shown in bold are “MUST SEE”

• 🌏 WORLD PREMIÈRE
• 🏁 International première
• 🍭 North American première
• 🇺🇸 U.S. première
• 🌊 West Coast première
• 🌁 Bay Area première

Frameline43: that’s a wrap!

The 43rd annual Frameline festival is done, and I have posted my reviews of all the films I saw this year! There were certainly a few clunkers, and a couple that I actually walked out on, but most of the films were well done, with engaging subjects and decent production values.

Here are the winners of the Frameline43 Audience Awards:

• Best Feature Film: Song Lang 👌Recommended
• Best Documentary Film: Changing the Game (not reviewed)
• Best Episodic: A Luv Tale: The Series 💖MUST SEE
• Best Short Film: Bubble 👌Recommended

The jury awards:

• Best First Feature: Fin de Siglo (End of the Century) 👌Recommended
• Best Documentary: Vision Portraits 👍Highly recommended

The Frameline Award was presented to Rodney Evans, director of Vision Portraits.

For what it’s worth, the winner for best short film I thought was outshone by all four of the other shorts in the same program, not to mention by several in other shorts programs.

Gay Chorus Deep South

Gay Chorus Deep South, dir. David Charles Rodrigues, 2019, USA, 100m 👍
Sunday, June 30, 7:00 pm, Castro Theatre

Gay Chorus Deep South
on the Edmund Pettus Bridge

In the aftermath of the 2016 Presidential election, the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus decided that some healing and reaching out was needed, so they planned a tour with per­for­mances in Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, and North and South Carolina, including several shows in churches. They teamed up with the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir and partnered with local nonprofits (all proceeds from ticket sales went to the local groups). Since several of the chorus members came from the South, we also get to see some family reunions as well as personal connections made with new acquaintances, and there are some surprising moments from the Southerners, including some self-identified as conservative and/or evangelical. It’s a moving journey, ably chroni­cled in this documentary, which is worth seeing. Highly recommended.

Obscure note: Gay Chorus Deep South is the first feature-length film produced by Airbnb.

• IMDb • official: GayChorusDeepSouth.com • trailer (YouTube) • Twitter: @GCDS_film • Facebook / Instagram: @GayChorusDeepSouth • San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus •

Los miembros de la familia (Family Members)

Los miembros de la familia (Family Members), dir. Mateo Bendesky, 2019, Argentina, 85m, in Spanish with English subtitles 👍
Sunday, June 23, 11:00 am, Victoria Theatre • North American première •
Sunday, June 30, 4:15 pm, Castro Theatre

Los miembros de la familia
(Family Members)

We the audience get to know Lucas and Gilda (Tomás Wicz and Laila Maltz, pictured) bit by bit, through a sequence of scenes with only sparse exposition, flashback, or even back reference, paralleling their process of getting reacquainted. They have been forced together by their mother’s death, traveling to her house on the Argentinian coast, carrying out her final wishes, but then they get stranded together by a bus strike preventing them from returning home.

Each day, they check to see if the strike has been settled, and then kill time until they can return home to their normal lives. Lucas socializes with some of the locals, most notably Guido (Alejandro Russek), with whom Lucas shares an interest in jiu-jitsu, fitness, motor­cycles, and … possibly other things. The pace of events is unhurried, but never lags. The actors convey subtle nuances without mood music or other crutches, against a mostly drab color palette, leaving us to focus on the characters and their immediate experiences. It’s very well done, Highly recommended.

• IMDb • trailer (YouTube) • Facebook: @LosMiembrosFilm •

Song Lang

Song Lang, dir. Leon Le, 2018, Viet Nam, 101m, in Vietnamese with English subtitles 👌
Tuesday, June 25, 9:15 pm, Victoria Theatre • Bay Area première •

Song Lang

Cải Lương
(Vietnamese opera)

First, a bit of background on the title: Song Lang with no accent marks refers to two small pieces of wood joined by a piece of spring steel, used to keep time in a musical per­for­mance, not to be confused with Sống Làng, Sông Lạng, or Song Lãng, which are three completely different things.

Most of the first half of the film is just setting the stage for the two main characters to finally have some one-on-one inter­ac­tion. Dùng (Liên Binh Phát, pictured left) is a thug employed by the local loan shark to collect debts. One of the debtors is an opera (cải lương) company, and Dùng meets Linh Phụng (Isaac, pictured right), the lead singer. They bond through bar brawls and video games, slowly moving closer to a personal connection even though the outside world (and in particular the loan shark) leaves little room for them. It was beautiful in many ways, but spent so very long establishing Dùng as a thug, then slowly melting his shell via childhood flashbacks, that we hardly had time for the love story to begin before the operatic ending of the movie.

I wasn’t a big fan of the director’s previous short film, Dawn (Frameline 38). This feature film is better, but only enough so to be Recommended.

• IMDb • Facebook: @SongLangTheMovie •

Clases de historia (History Lessons)

Clases de historia (History Lessons), dir. Marcelino Islas Hernández, 2018, Mexico, 104m, in Spanish with English subtitles 👍
Sunday, June 23, 4:00 pm, Victoria Theatre • U.S. première •
Saturday, June 29, 6:30 pm, Landmark Theatres Piedmont (Oakland)

Clases de historia
(History Lessons)

We the audience get to know Lucas and Gilda (Tomás Wicz and Laila Maltz, pictured) bit by bit, through a sequence of scenes with only sparse exposition, flashback, or even back reference, paralleling their process of getting reacquainted. Brother and sister have been forced together by their mother’s death, carrying out her final wishes with a visit to her cottage on the Argentinian coast, but then they get stranded together by a national bus strike preventing them from returning home. As they wait for the strike to end, Lucas ventures out with some of the locals, including a young man with similar interests in fitness and motorcycles (and more), but the uncer­tain­ty of the situation looms over each day. 

It’s a deftly woven tale with interesting characters given the space to inhabit interesting situ­a­tions, definitely Highly recommended.

• IMDb • trailer (vimeo) • official website (en español) •

Ni d’Ève ni d’Adam (No Box for Me: An Intersex Story)

Ni d’Ève ni d’Adam. Une histoire intersexe (No Box for Me. An Intersex Story), dir. Floriane Devigne, 2018, France/Switzerland, 58m, in French with English subtitles 💖
Saturday, June 22, 11:00 am, Roxie Theater • Bay Area première •

Ni d’Ève ni d’Adam.
Une histoire intersexe
(No Box for Me.
An Intersex Story)

Imagine that from the very moment of your birth your life faced a fork in the road. The doctors looked at your new­born body, and could not easily say “boy“ or “girl”: on the check­list of phys­io­log­ical sex markers, there may have been check marks in both columns, or some characteristics that fell into a gray area. The doctors picked the sex they thought was closer and took surgical steps to affirm their selection, setting your life irrevers­ibly off down one fork or the other. Yes, it is true that most people are not inter­sex — most people are either cis­women, cis­men, trans­women, or trans­men — but on a global scale people with an inter­sex con­di­tion are about as common as people with red hair.

👩‍🦰👨‍🦰

Ni d’Ève ni d’Adam (No Box for Me) follows one intersex person as they seek to under­stand more about intersex conditions and how they have been treated by the med­i­cal estab­lish­ment, as well as what should be considered best practices in the future. They study the lit­er­a­ture and talk to doctors and to other people with intersex conditions (including the anonymous person whose images are blanked out as in the photo above), and we sit with them while they come out to their younger sister. On every level from schol­arly academia to deeply personal and subjective, we get a glimpse into the nuances of navigating life as an intersex person and working to make life better for sub­se­quent gen­er­a­tions, making this documentary truly a MUST SEE.

• IMDb [placeholder page] • trailer (vimeo) • official website (en français) • note: the full film is available on vimeo VOD, but not in the U.S. •

Ponyboi

Screened with the short film Ponyboi, which was not avail­able for advance screening. Synopsis: Writer and co-director River Gallo stars as the titular Ponyboi, an intersex sex worker in New Jersey looking for an escape. Will an encounter with a hunky daddy (Keith Allan, Z Nation) be Pony­boi’s ticket out of Jersey?

Ponyboi, directors: River Gallo & Sadé Clacken Joseph, 2019, USA, 19m • IMDb • official: PonyboiTheFilm.com • trailer (YouTube) • Bay Area première •

Last Ferry

Last Ferry, dir. Jaki Bradley, 2019, USA, 86m 💩💩💩
Saturday, June 29, 9:30 pm, Castro Theatre • North American première •

Last Ferry

A young lawyer sneaks off to Fire Island in April for no apparent reason. He is almost immediately drugged and mugged, witness to an apparent murder, rescued by strangers who give him a place to sleep and some bitchy conversation. We then get little hints of other malevolent threads to the story, but more than halfway through, the film had utterly failed to answer the fundamental question: WHY SHOULD I CARE about any of these people or events? I walked out, wishing I hadn’t bothered to show up at all. Definitely NOT RECOMMENDED — AVOID THIS FILM! Whatever effort you have to make to not see this film will be worth it.

Oh, I should add that a friend who made the mistake of staying to the end, told me that it got even worse after I left.

• IMDb • official: LastFerryMovie.com • teaser trailer (vimeo) • Facebook / Twitter: @LastFerryMovie •

Croce e delizia (An Almost Ordinary Summer)

Croce e delizia (An Almost Ordinary Summer), dir. Simone Godano, 2019, Italy, 100m, in Italian with subtitles 👎🏼
Saturday, June 29, 7:00 pm, Castro Theatre • Bay Area première •

Croce e delizia
(An Almost Ordinary Summer)

Two families, mostly meeting for the first time and with seem­ingly almost nothing in common, spend a summer holi­day together at the seaside. The reason for their joint vaca­tion is for the patriarchs of the two families to announce that they are getting married — to one another. Both fami­lies are shocked and resist this unexpected devel­op­ment with what were clearly supposed to be comedic antics. However, the central couple lacks any sense of why they are together: except for a very few brief moments of ten­der­ness between them, they come across as being as much in different worlds as their children are. Apparently the incessant bickering between the two men, and between each of them and his family, and between one family and the other, is somehow supposed to be funny, but to say it fell flat is beyond under­state­ment. Definitely one of the most disappointing films at this year’s Frameline, and categorically NOT RECOMMENDED.

Note: the Italian title, Croce e delizia, literally means “cross and delight,” or more idiomat­i­cally “curse and blessing,” but An Almost Ordinary Summer is the official English title.

• IMDb • Facebook: @CroceEDelizia.IlFilm •

Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street

Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street, dir. Roman Chimienti & Tyler Jensen, 2019, USA, 99m 💖
Saturday, June 29, 4:15 pm, Castro Theatre • Special Advance Screening •

Scream, Queen!
My Nightmare on Elm Street

In 1985, on the heels of the wildly successful Nightmare on Elm Street the previous year, New Line Cinema put out a sequel, Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge, with up-and-coming star Mark Patton in the lead role. The script was full of homoerotic elements, but more in the text than subtext. The “scream queen” character (the girl who fights back against the bad guy) was written as a teenage boy, and various scenes included elements like a gay leather bar and a very kinky shower scene in the boys’ gym. Patton, in real life a closeted aspiring movie star, was told to gay it up, which he did — exactly as the writer and director wanted. When the blatant homoeroticism of the story caused a critical and public backlash, writer David Chaskin and director Jack Sholder pointed their fingers at Patton, suggesting that the young actor single-handedly made it a gay film. Patton’s film career was destroyed, leading him to move into seclusion in Mexico until revived public interest in Nightmare 2 led someone to hire a private detective to track him down.

Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street picks up with Mark Patton around the time of the 30th anniversary of Nightmare 2. He speaks candidly about his experiences in the 1980s and since, and even has a sit-down interview with writer David Chaskin, who finally admitted a few years ago that the homosexual content in the film was intentional, but we also hear from several of the co-stars as well as historians and fans including local darling Peaches Christ. It’s a compelling look at the way the Hollywood machine can lift someone up and then turn them into a scapegoat. I’m not at all a fan of the “slasher” genre — I have only seen Nightmare 2 out of the whole 8-film franchise, for example — but its magnificent campiness won me over in spite of the gallons of blood. With the benefit of three decades of perspective, Patton is sanguine in his appraisal of the turns his life took as a result of his one starring role, and makes an engaging subject for the film, as well as being a delight in person. For that reason — even if you have zero interest in horror films — this is a MUST SEE.

• IMDb • official site: ScreamQueenDocumentary.com • trailer (vimeo) • Facebook: @ScreamQueenDocumentary •

Guest Artist

Guest Artist, dir. Timothy Busfield, 2019, USA, 75m 👍
Saturday, June 29, 2:00 pm, Castro Theatre

Guest Artist

Jeff Daniels plays Joseph Harris, a washed-up (and inci­dentally gay) New York playwright whose agent talks him into a guest artist gig at a local playhouse in Lima, Ohio, but with the kids from Glee nowhere to be seen. He arrives by train in Lima in the middle of the night, met belatedly by an intern, Kenneth (Thomas Macias in his debut film role), who idolizes Harris. Kenneth is brimming with youthful enthu­si­asm and ambition, in sharp contrast to the jaded Harris, who all but refuses to set foot in Lima, even after arriving there. The dialogue is rapid fire, full of sharp-edged wit and serious insight. The entire credited cast is only eight people, so it is all about the dialogue, mostly between Harris and Kenneth. The gay content is minor, a couple of passing references, but the drama is solid. Highly recommended.

• IMDb • trailer (YouTube) [parental advisory] •

Simple Wedding

Simple Wedding, dir. Sara Zandieh, 2018, USA, 88m 👍
Friday, June 28, 9:15 pm, Castro Theatre • Bay Area première •

Simple Wedding

Twice in one festival, Frameline has highlighted a romantic comedy about a man and a woman. The first one, Straight Up, was about a (probably) gay man who, in frustration over his lack of gay intimacy, decides to try having a girl­friend instead. Simple Wedding, though, is the story of a bisex­u­al man and a heterosexual woman who have a heterosexu­al relationship. They have gay friends, and his father married a man (played by James Eckhouse from the original Beverly Hills 90210), but both of the budding relationships are heterosexual. And yet the Hollywood studios wanted nothing to do with the project in its early days, because it was too gay. That’s why it landed in a queer film festival. Like Todd Stephens’ second feature, Gypsy 83, which was too gay for Hollywood but not gay enough for the major queer film distributors, it’s stuck in limbo.

Simple Wedding follows Nousha Husseini, born to Iranian parents but raised in Orange County, California. Nousha has trouble standing up for herself against nosy coworkers, against her overbearing mother, or against the men she dates. On the rebound from a failed relationship, she meets Alex, a bisexual man, and they quickly find themselves swept into a wedding neither really anticipated. The dramas within each of their families multiply when the in-laws meet. The cast includes a who’s-who of Iranian-American film actors, Shohreh Aghdashloo as Nousha’s mother and Maz Jobrani as her uncle, just for starters. The comedy is solid, with laughs throughout. Highly recommended.

• IMDb •

Clementine

Clementine, dir. Lara Gallagher, 2019, USA, 90m 🙄
Friday, June 28, 6:30 pm, Castro Theatre • West Coast première •

Clementine

Karen has just been dumped by her older girlfriend, so she goes up to the ex’s lake house in Oregon, where she meets and begins spending time with a young woman who gives her name as Lara. We then get various mysterious clues, like a gun in a desk drawer. The problem is, we don’t get enough character development to make us care what happens to these people, and there isn’t enough plot to cover that gaping absence. The title of the film comes from an insignificant scene that barely ties into anything else. Bottom line: unsatisfying on every level, thoroughly “meh.” Not recommended.

• IMDb • official: ClementineMovie.com •

Transfinite

Transfinite, dir. Neelu Bhuman, USA/UK/​India, 70m, in English, Spanish, Swahili, and Navajo, with full open captions in English throughout 😐
Tuesday, June 25, 6:45 pm, Victoria Theatre • Bay Area première •
Thursday, June 27, 2019, 9:15 pm, Landmark Theatres Piedmont

Transfinite

Seven short sci-fi films by a diverse group of writers, but with a few threads uniting them, particularly trans/​queer char­ac­ters and magical wish fulfill­ment, but unfor­tu­nate­ly also clunky performances (despite the SAG/​AFTRA logo in the credits) and disappointing production values, reminis­cent of Frameline a quarter century ago. It’s a labor of love, clearly, but the best I can give it is tepidly recommended.

• IMDb • official: TransFiniteFilm.com (links to trailer and to the full film) • fully open captioned for the hearing impaired

A Luv Tale (the series)

A Luv Tale (the series), dir. Kay Oyegun, 2018, USA, 77m 💖
Thursday, June 27, 6:45 pm, Castro Theatre

A Luv Tale (the series)
creator Sidra Smith front center

In 1999, filmmaker Sidra Smith presented a 45-minute featurette called A Luv Tale, a story about a lesbian and a straight woman who are getting out of bad relation­ships. Nearly 20 years later, she returned to the idea, expanding it to a miniseries about four black lesbians in Harlem with their family, friends, and love lives interwoven with plenty of unexpected crossovers. There is intrigue, but all with a definite sense of class, with homes that most people in New York City would kill for, sort of a black Harlem verson of The L Word. These are proudly stories of black queer women, by black queer women, for everyone but especially for black queer women.

I go to Frameline to see stories about people I identify with, but also to see stories from and about people with very different life experiences, with a particular emphasis on queer women of color. A Luv Tale: The Series is funny, with plenty of laughs, and you should see it for that reason alone, but it is also important in terms of representation in front of and behind the camera. Definitely a MUST SEE.

• IMDb (2018 series) (1999 feature film) • YouTube channel • 1999 feature on Amazon • (distribution deal pending for the new series)

Thanks to Hank

Thanks to Hank, dir. Bob Ostertag, 2019, USA, 81m 👍
Thursday, June 27, 4:15 pm, Castro Theatre • WORLD PREMIÈRE •

Thanks to Hank

Hank Wilson led a remarkable life, but seldom talked about himself, preferring to focus on the cause(s) he was working on at the time. He dropped out of college to become a teacher with the Vista program (now part of AmeriCorps), but also was a co-founder of more than a dozen agencies, groups, and events that we now take for granted as part of the background. He was a tireless advocate for the homeless, queer youth, people of color, people with AIDS, and many other marginalized groups.

I knew Hank (“friend of a friend,” several times over) but I knew very little of his life, brought to the big screen with love by his friends. Highly recommended.

• IMDb • official blog •

Vision Portraits

Vision Portraits, dir. Rodney Evans, 2019, USA/Germany/Canada, 78m 👍
Wednesday, June 26, 4:00 pm, Castro Theatre • West Coast première •
Note: preceded by presentation of the Frameline Award to Rodney Evans

Vision Portraits: Rodney Evans

Filmmaker Rodney Evans [Brother to Brother (2004), The Happy Sad (2013)] turns his camera to a subject very close to him: artists with visual impairments. Evans and the other artists he profiles have all lost most of their sight in the ocular (eyeball) sense, but not the vision of their hearts and minds. I’ve linked below to more information about the indi­vid­u­al artists, but you should see this film, too. Definitely highly recommended.

• IMDb • IMDb for Rodney Evans § John Dugdale § Kayla Hamilton § Ryan Knighton • official websites: Rodney Evans § John Dugdale § Kayla Hamilton § Ryan Knighton •

Sell By

Sell By, dir. Mike Doyle, 2019, USA, 94m 👎🏼
Wednesday, June 26, 9:15 pm, Castro Theatre • US première •

Sell By

A 30-ish gay couple make their living as social media “influencers,” but the photos of their beautiful life (with care­ful product placement, of course), hide a more complicated relationship with commitment issues. Mix in a couple of wacky friends with their even wackier love lives, and you get … a cold bowl of oatmeal. I sat through more than half of this attempted comedy and didn’t laugh once, didn’t chuckle once, didn’t even break a smile, but I did check my watch a half dozen times to see “Is it over yet??”

Enthusiastically NOT RECOMMENDED.  • IMDb •

Sid & Judy

Sid & Judy, dir. Stephen Kijak, 2019, USA, 100m 💖
Wednesday, June 26, 6:30 pm, Castro Theatre • WORLD PREMIÈRE •
also screening at Outfest, Saturday, July 27, 8:30 pm, Ford Theatres 

Sid Luft & Judy Garland

What new can be said about Judy Garland that hasn’t already been said? In a word, plenty! Filmmaker Stephen Kijak had unprecedented access to family archival material, including audio tapes of both Judy and her third husband Sid Luft, as well as the manuscript of Luft’s recently published memoir, giving a much more personal view of her ups and downs (and uppers and downers) than you’ve seen before. Whether you have seen every film and tv appearance she ever did, or you only know Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, this film is defi­nitely a MUST SEE.

Showtime Documentary Films is the distributor, so presumably this will be coming to premium cable in due course, but if it pops up near you, go see it! • IMDb • official: StephenKijak.com •

Queer Genius

Queer Genius, dir. Chet Catherine Pancake, 2019, USA, 115m 👍
Tuesday, June 25, 1:00 pm, Castro Theatre • WORLD PREMIÈRE •

Queer Genius
Barbara Hammer (1939–2019)

Queer Genius profiles five queer artists: legendary film­maker Barbara Hammer (who passed away before the film was completed), poet Eileen Myles, Rasheedah Phillips and Camae Ayewa (a.k.a. Moor Mother) of the Black Quantum Futurism collective, and performance artist Jibz Cameron (a.k.a. Dynasty Handbag). Hammer was the only artist whose work I had seen prior to this film, but all five bring an unapologetic queer voice to their work and to their lives. Highly recommended.

• IMDb • Barbara Hammer on IMDb § official: BarbaraHammer.com • Eileen Myles official: EileenMyles.com § Poetry Foundation § Twitter: @EileenMyles • official Black Quantum Futurism • official DynastyHandbag.com •

Only the Brave 2019

“Only the Brave” shorts program 2019
Saturday, June 29, 4:00 pm, Roxie Theater

Yulia & Juliet, dir. Zara Dwinger, 2018, Netherlands, 12m, in Dutch with English subtitles • West Coast première • 😐
My World in Yours (Min värld i din), dir. Jennifer Malmqvist, 2019, Sweden, 29m, in Swedish with English subtitles • International première • 👍
Ranchera (A Ranchera Song), dir. Joaquín Gómez, 2018, Spain, 6m, in Spanish with English subtitles • Bay Area première • 😐
How to Live Your Life Correctly, dir. 娄散笛 (Xindi LOU), 2018, USA, 21m, in Chinese with English subtitles • Bay Area première • 😐
Home Girl, dir. Poonam Brah, 2019, UK, 12m • Bay Area première • 👍

Burn the House Down / Fabulous

Burn the House Down, dirs. Giselle Bailey & Nneka Onuorah, 2019, France, 44m, in French with English subtitles • WORLD PREMIÈRE • 💖
Fabulous, dir. Audrey Jean-Baptiste, 2019, France, 47m, in French with English subtitles • US première • 💖
Frameline page for the double feature
Saturday, June 22, 9:15 pm, Roxie Theater
Saturday, June 29, 9:00 pm, Landmark Theatres Piedmont (Oakland)

Burn the House Down

Burn the House Down • WORLD PREMIÈRE

The Ballroom scene has been exceptionally influential in dance around the world, and more broadly in global gay culture, but that pales compared to its impact on the people closer to its origins in the black gay neighborhoods of Brooklyn, NYC. Lasseindra Ninja and her compatriots brought Ball­room to Paris for the first time in 2011, but it quick­ly put down roots. Now Kiddy Smile (pictured) is doing a concert, bringing “Paris is Burning” to Paris. It’s truly a remarkable peek into the global spread of this fiercely creative art form. MUST SEE.
• IMDb (title not yet listed) Giselle Bailey § Nneka Onuorah • official: GiselleBailey § Viceland •

---

Fabulous

Fabulous

Lasseindra Ninja (né Xavier) brought Brooklyn Ballroom / Fem Voguing to the world, but only just brought it to her native French Guiana, a small French territory on the Carib­bean coast of South America. We get to meet Lasseindra and the workshop she leads in Cayenne, with personal stories intermixed with the deeper meanings of the nuances of the dancing. Ballroom culture is worth celebrating, and bringing it to a new place, where the gay community is scattered and hidden, is a visionary act of love and inclu­sion. MUST SEE.

• IMDb • trailer (YouTube) • Lasseindra on IMDb § Facebook • ParisBallroomTV on YouTube § Facebook •

Straight Up

Straight Up, dir. James Sweeney, 2019, US, 95m • WORLD PREMIÈRE • 💖
Monday, June 24, 9:15 pm, Castro Theatre

Straight Up
Katie Findlay, James Sweeney

Who would have thought that the crowd pleaser at an LGBTQ+ film festival would be a romcom about a man and a woman?? First-time feature filmmaker James Sweeney made a comedy that is funny, sweet, witty, heartfelt, and did I mention funny. The central character, Todd, played by Sweeney himself, is being treated for Obsessive-Compul­sive Disorder, and that OCD provides some of the comedy, but Sweeney manages to use the OCD as a wellspring for humor without ever using it as the butt of the joke, a delicate balancing act with a rich payoff.

Before You Know It

Before You Know It, dir. Hannah Pearl Utt, 2019, USA, 98m 👎🏼👎🏼
Monday, June 24, 6:30 pm, Castro Theatre

Before You Know It

Relentlessly tiresome and hopelessly unfunny. I sat through the first half without laughing once, without chuckling once, without so much as cracking a halfhearted smile. Mandy Patinkin turned in a great performance as the insufferably annoying father, but the problem with doing a great job playing an insufferably annoying character is that it is very easy for your performance itself to be insufferably annoying. Besides that, he dies very early in the film. His two daughters are polar opposites in some respects, one much more annoying than the other, but they both have their cringe-inducing moments. As I sat through the first half, I found myself caring less and less about the whole story with each passing moment, until I reached zero.

I walked out. Save yourself the trouble: just don’t go see this humorless hot mess. Definitely NOT RECOMMENDED. Coming to theatres at the end of August, so be sure you don’t accidentally buy a ticket. • IMDb •

L’heure de la sortie (School’s Out)

L’heure de la sortie (School’s Out), dir. Sébastien Marnier, 2018, France, 103m, in French with English subtitles* • West Coast première • 💩🚨💩🚨💩🚨💩

L’heure de la sortie
(School’s Out)

The film begins with a 9th-grade teacher leaping out a window in the middle of class for no apparent reason. Pierre (pictured, rear left) is sent to finish the school year, but his students show themselves to be bizarre and nefar­i­ous in ways that defy understanding, and everything in the school and in the town, often photographed under the ominous presence of the twin cooling towers of a nearby nuclear power station, is weird, weirder, what the fuck, whyyyyy?

The entire exercise is ultimately pointless, offering zero insight into any of the characters or events, simply throwing disturbing images at the audience for shock value alone without the slightest hint of redeeming value. Quelle espèce de merde! Beyond that, the LGBTQ content is marginal at best. Truly a waste of nearly two hours of your time, definitely a film to AVOID AT ALL COSTS.

• IMDb • *note: small portions in English without subtitles

Marc Huestis: Impresario of Castro Street

“Marc Huestis: Impresario of Castro Street” (special presentation)
Sunday, June 23, 6:45 pm, Victoria Theatre

Marc Huestis:
Impresario of
Castro Street

Marc Huestis (pictured) was a co-founder of Frameline back in 1977, and then went on to make several films of his own, including one of the first AIDS documentaries. He later turned his attention to live events in tribute to some of his favorite Hollywood stars, and now has written a memoir and semi-retired to a cabin near Lake Tahoe.

In this special presentation, Marc pulled together clips from his films, personal photographs, live readings of selections from his memoir by Bruce Vilanch, Danny Nicoletta (also a Frameline co-founder), and more, and live performances. It was quite an event, not to be missed. Congratulations to Marc on a fabulous evening, and y’all go get that memoir!

• IMDb: Marc Huestis • Marc’s YouTube channel • Marc Huestis Presents • Twitter: @MarcHuestis • Marc’s memoir (Amazon) •

Making Montgomery Clift

Making Montgomery Clift, dir. Robert A. Clift & Hillary Demmon, 2018, USA, 88m 💖
Sunday, June 23, 4:00 pm, Castro Theatre

Making Montgomery Clift

Montgomery Clift (b. 1920-10-17, d. 1966-07-23) was one of the best known Hollywood heartthrobs of his generation, but died at age 45. The myth-making machine immediately cast him as a tragic figure, tormented by his closeted sexu­ality, driven to alcohol and drug addiction and an inevitable untimely death. Clift’s youngest nephew, Robert A. Clift, born a few years after his uncle’s death, draws upon not only interviews with Clift’s biographer and some of his contemporaries, but also a wealth of family archive material, including home movies and numerous audio recordings (some probably made without the knowledge of the other parties), to draw a very different portrait of the actor, a man who was both a confident artist and a self-possessed gay (or bisexual) man.

Homegrown Shorts 2019

“Homegrown” shorts program 2019
Sunday, June 23, 9:30 pm, Victoria Theatre

Origin, dir. Simone Lyles, 2019, USA, 20m • Bay Area première • 👍
Trans 128, dir. Jimmy Zhang, 2018, USA, 6m • WORLD PREMIÈRE •👌
Eat the Rainbow, dir. Brian Benson, 2019, USA, 19m 👌
Nice Chinese Girls Don’t!, dir. Jennifer Abod, 2019, USA, 22m • West Coast première •👍
Verasphere: A Love Story in Costume, dir. Robert James, 2019, USA, 20m • WORLD PREMIÈRE • 👍

Bit

Bit, dir. Brad Michael Elmore, 2019, USA, 90m • US Première 👍
Saturday, June 22, 9:30 pm, Castro Theatre

Bit: feminist vampires of L.A.

Laurel is a disenchanted 18-year-old from central Oregon on a summer trip to Los Angeles, sleeping on her brother’s sofa, when by chance she meets up with a foursome of lesbian radical feminist vampires determined to use their super­nat­u­ral powers to empower women and disempower (which is to say disembowel) some of the more creepy men around them. It’s a vampire movie, so of course there is death and vio­lence and plenty of spurting blood, but it’s also a comedy with a lot to say about gender and societal power dynamics, although less to say than I expected about the fact that Laurel is a disenchanted 18-year-old transgender woman. It’s well done, so, if you’re not put off by the blood and gore, it’s highly recommended. • IMDb •

Benjamin

Benjamin, dir. Simon Amstell, 2018, UK, 85m • West Coast Première 💖
Saturday, June 22, 7:00 pm, Castro Theatre

“One path to happiness is to enjoy sadness.”

Benjamin
(Simon Amstell [L] and
Phénix Brossard [R])

Benjamin (filmmaker Simon Amstell, pictured left) is his own greatest obstacle to success, personally and professionally. He is deathly afraid that his second film won’t live up to the success of his first film, so he buries himself in esoteric philosophical YouTube videos from a Buddhist monk. He bounces from one twink boyfriend to another, sabotaging anything that even hints at becoming a serious relationship. We in the audience bounce from laughing with him to laughing at him and back, with no small amount of cringing at Benjamin (and others) sticking his foot in his mouth well past his knee, but we are consistently laughing. Definitely a MUST SEE.

• IMDb • official: OpenPalmFilms • trailer (YouTube) •

Kinky Boots: The Musical

Kinky Boots: The Musical, dir. Jerry Mitchell & Brett Sullivan, 2019, UK, 126m • WORLD PREMIÈRE 💖
Saturday, June 22, 4:00 pm, Castro Theatre
in broader release Tuesday, June 25, 2019 and Saturday, June 29, 2019

Kinky Boots: the Musical
(almost) Live from London

This screening was a new format for Frameline: a stage production of a Broadway/​West End musical, live-captured in HD, and this screening was also the world première of this particular work. Kinky Boots was first a movie, released in 2005, and then in 2012 a musical play. The basic plot: Charlie Price is a fourth-generation shoemaker who has just inherited the family business, Price & Son, a shoe factory started in the 19th century. The business is struggling in the 21st century, ruthlessly undercut by foreign competition, so Charlie needs a miracle to keep the business afloat. His hail-Mary play is to produce thigh-high stiletto-heeled boots for drag queens, beautiful and fashionable enough to be on stage and yet also sturdy enough for a grown man. 

I’ve never seen the play (haven’t been to London since before there was an Eye, an Egg, or a Shard) nor the original film, but this production was flawless and the play hilarious, but with some real humanity behind the humour. If you have a choice between a live West End performance or this filmed version, of course go for the real thing, but if you can’t make it to the Adelphi Theatre, by all means this is a MUST SEE. 

• IMDb: 2019 musical / 2005 original film • Adelphi Theatre • Fathom Events (film) •

Fin de siglo (End of the Century)

Fin de siglo (End of the Century), dir. Lucio Castro, 2019, Argentina, 84m, in (Castilian) Spanish with English subtitles • West Coast première 👌
Friday, June 21, 9:30 pm, Castro Theatre
Saturday, June 29, 9:30 pm, Victoria Theatre

Fin de siglo
(End of the Century)

Ocho (Juan Barberini, left) and Javi (Ramón Pujol) meet in present-day Barcelona and retire to Ocho’s AirBnB, where they come to realize that they met twenty years earlier, just before Y2K. The story then interweaves the present day with their mem­o­ries of 1999 and some “what might have been” projections of how the intervening years could have unfolded differently.

Der Boden unter den Füßen (The Ground Beneath My Feet)

Der Boden unter den Füßen (The Ground Beneath My Feet), dir. Marie Kreutzer, 2019, Austria, 108m, in German with English subtitles • Bay Area Première 😐

Der Boden unter den Füßen
(The Ground Beneath My Feet)photo: ©Juhani Zebra

Lola (Valerie Pachner, pictured left) is a business consultant specializing in corporate restructuring. It’s a cutthroat busi­ness with little room for personal feelings, so Lola works long hours and also hides from her coworkers (and even from her boss, with whom she is having a clandestine affair) the existence of her older sister Conny (Pia Hierzegger, pictured right). Conny has a psychological crisis (not her first), drawing Lola back in, but between the stress of her job and the added stress of dealing with Conny, Lola begins to question her own grip on reality.

Proceed with Caution

“Proceed with Caution” shorts program
Friday, June 21, 1:30 pm, Castro Theatre

Baby, dir. Jessie Levandov, 2019, USA, 8m • US Première 👍
XaveMePlease, dir. Wesley Taylor, 2019, USA, 11m • West Coast Première 👌
Interested In (episodes 1, 2, & 3), dir. Blayze Teicher, 2019, USA, 13m • Bay Area Première 👌
Stranger Out of You, dir. Matthew Risch, 2019, USA, 17m • WORLD PREMIÈRE 😐
First Position., dir. Michael Elias Thomas, 2019, USA, 20m • WORLD PREMIÈRE 👍
Lavender, dir. Matthew Puccini, 2019, USA, 11m 👍

Vita & Virginia

Vita & Virginia, dir. Chanya Button, 2018, Ireland/UK, 110m
Thursday, June 20, 7:00 pm, Castro Theatre 👎🏼

Virginia Woolf & Vita Sackville-West

This biopic is the story of one of the great literary lesbian love stories of the 20th century, but it is as dreary as could be. Vita Sackville-West comes across as a conniving, mani­pulative, self-absorbed ass, pretentious to a fault, and only barely capable of genuine feelings. Virginia Woolf comes across as addled and fragile, prone to nervous fits. The inter­ac­tion between them has a cold detachment, even when they’re in the throes of ecstasy. 

Behind it all is one of the worst musical scores to which I have been subjected in a very long time, mixing strings with thumping synthesizer beats, all twice as loud as it had any business being, doing everything possible to wreck, rather than set, the mood in scene after scene after scene. When the sound design is so bad that it is salient, that’s a very bad sign, and composer Isobel Waller-Bridge deserves only part of the blame. Isabella Rossellini has a small role as Lady Sackville, Vita’s overbearing mother, but that is nowhere near enough to redeem this mess; indeed, it is only barely enough to save this film from a 💩 rating. Definitely NOT RECOMMENDED. • IMDb • trailer (YouTube) •

Transtastic 2019

“Transtastic” shorts program
Monday, June 24, 7:00 pm, Roxie Theater, 83 minutes total runtime

(Rani)‎ ‏رانی‏ , dir. Hammad Rizvi, 2018, Pakistan/USA, 15m, in Urdu with subtitles👍
Desperately Seeking Shavers, dir. Emmett Aldred, 2018, Australia, 6m • International Première 👍
სოციუმის პატიმარი / Sotsiumis P’at’imari (Prisoner of Society), dir. რატი წითელაძე (Rati Tsiteladze), 2018, Georgia, 15m, in Georgian with subtitles • North American Première 👌
Tell-By Date, dir. Sarah Ball, 2019, USA/UK, 14m • West Coast Première❓
Here with You, dir. Nona Schamus, 2019, USA, 7m • WORLD PREMIÈRE 👍
Homosafe, dir. Lorin Murphy, 2018, USA, 4m 👍
Skin, dir. Audrey Rosenberg, 2019, USA, 22m • WORLD PREMIÈRE 👍

Animation Shorts 2019

“Animation Shorts” shorts program

Saturday, June 29, 1:30 pm, Roxie Theater, 98 minutes total runtime

Entropia, dir. Flóra Anna Buda, 2019, Hungary, 11m • Bay Area Première 👌
Biidaaban (The Dawn Comes), dir. Amanda Strong, 2018, Canada, 19m, in English and in Squamish with English subtitles👌
Docking, dir. Trevor Anderson, 2019, Canada/USA, 4m • Bay Area Première 👍
Les lèvres gercées (Chapped Lips), dirs. Fabien Corre & Kelsi Phung, 2018, France, 5m, in French with subtitles 👍
Sweet Sweet Kink: A Collection of BDSM Stories, dir. Maggie M. Bailey, 2019, USA/Chile, 14m 👍
Topp 3 (Top 3), dir. Sofie Edvardsson, 2019, Sweden, 45m, in Swedish with subtitles • WORLD PREMIÈRE 💖

Dark Twisted Fantasies 2019

“Dark Twisted Fantasies” shorts program
Saturday, June 29, 9:30 pm, Roxie Theatre

唐朝綺麗男 (The Glamorous Boys of Tang), dir. 蘇匯宇 Su Hui-yu, 2019, Taiwan, 15m, no dialogue • North American Première 😐
Self Destructive Boys, dirs. Marco Leão & André Santos, 2018, Portugal, 27m, in Portuguese with subtitles • Bay Area Première 😐
Ultra pulpe (Apocalypse After), dir. Bertrand Mandico, 2018, France, 37m, in French with subtitles • Bay Area Première 👍👎🏼

Luciérnagas / Fireflies

Luciérnagas (Fireflies), dir. Bani Khoshnoudi, 2018, Mexico/USA/Greece/Dominican Republic, 87m, in Spanish, English, and Farsi with subtitles 👍
Thursday, June 20, 10:00 pm, Castro Theatre
Saturday, June 22, 9:30 pm, Victoria Theatre

Luciérnagas (Fireflies)

Esto no es Berlín / This is not Berlin

Esto no es Berlín (This is not Berlin), dir. Hari Sama, 2019, Mexico, 105m, in Spanish with subtitles • Bay Area Première • 💖
Friday, June 21, 6:45 pm, Victoria Theatre
Monday, June 24, 3:45 pm, Castro Theatre

Esto no es Berlín • Xabiani Ponce de León as Carlos

Sócrates

Sócrates, dir. Alexandre Moratto, 2018, Brazil, 71m, in Portuguese with subtitles 💖
Thursday, June 27, 9:15 pm, Victoria Theatre

Sócrates (Christian Malheiros, right)

Worldly Affairs 2019

“Worldly Affairs” shorts program; note: contains sexually explicit material
Friday, June 28, 4:00 pm Castro Theatre

Bror (Brother), dir. Isabella Carbonell, 2019, Sweden, 15m, in Swedish with subtitles 👍 North American première
Reforma (Renovation), dir. Fábio Leal, 2018, Brazil, 15m, in Portuguese with subtitles👍 North American première
Delivery Boy (外賣仔), dir. Hugo Kenzo Hirosawa, 2019, Hong Kong, 16m, in Cantonese with subtitles and in English without subtitles 💖 West Coast première
My Loneliness is Killing Me, dir. Tim Courtney, 2018, UK, 16m👌 Bay Area première
Σπινθηροβόλα Κεράκια (Sparkling Candles), dir. Thanásis Neofótistos (Θανάσης Νεοφώτιστος), 2019, Greece, 10m, in Greek with subtitles👍 WORLD PREMIÈRE
Isha, dir. Christopher Manning, 2018, UK, 15m, in Romanian with subtitles 👍 North American première

QWOCMAP/QWOCFF 2019

Every year, the weekend before the Frameline LGBTQ+ Film Festival starts, San Francisco audiences are treated to some top-notch films, mostly locally made short films, by, for, and about queer women of color, thanks to the Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project and its 15th annual QWOCFF, June 14 – 16, 2019, at the Brava Theater, 2789 24th St @ York St, San Francisco, CA 94110, Muni #48, #9, #27, or #33, BART 24th St plus Muni or 15-minute walk. Admission is free, but you can register online to save time in the line at the door.

These films are made with love and passion, usually on a less-than-a-shoestring budget, but the quality will knock your socks off. These are well-made films providing a voice and an audience to some of the more marginalized parts of our community, so I hope I’ll see you there!

• Queer Women of Color Film Festival trailer (vimeo) •

Temblores (Tremors)

Temblores (Tremors), dir. Jayro Bustamante, 2019, Guatemala/France/Luxembourg, 107m 👍
Tuesday, June 25, 6:30 pm, Castro Theatre
Centerpiece/World Cinema

Temblores (Tremors): Pablo (L) and Francisco

Temblores is a very well crafted film, well written, well acted, and emotionally affecting. Just be aware that it’s a very dark film, very much a counterweight to the “feel good, happy ending” coming out stories that are perennial festival favorites. The family’s attempts to “convert” the protagonist Pablo back to heterosexuality, get pretty heavy. If the words “adult conversion therapy” are a trigger for you, this is not your film. Highly recommended, with reservations.

Note that the star, Juan Pablo Olyslager (left in photo), is expected to attend the screening.

Marlon Riggs: No Regrets

“Marlon Riggs: No Regrets” shorts program/retrospective 💖
Thursday, June 27, 11:00 am, Castro Theatre

Anthem, dir. Marlon T. Riggs, 1991, USA, 9 min.💖
Affirmations, dir. Marlon T. Riggs, 1990, USA, 9 min. 💖
Non, je ne regrette rien (No Regret), dir. Marlon T. Riggs, 1992, USA, 38 min. 💖
The Creative Mind (excerpts), produced by KQED, 1991, USA, 10 min. ❓

This program is a retrospective on the work of Marlon Riggs (1957–1994), a groundbreaking artist who explored the intersection of race and sexuality, including in the revolutionary 1989 film Tongues Untied. Here we see three of his later works, defining a rich legacy far beyond his brief 37 years.

Fun in Girls Shorts (2019)

“Fun in Girls Shorts” shorts program
Saturday, June 22, 1:30 pm, Castro Theatre
Saturday, June 29, 11:00 am, Landmark Theatre Piedmont
NOTE: this year, F.I.G.S. will NOT play at the Castro on Pride Sunday

Misdirection, dir. Carly Usdin, 2019, USA, 14 min. Bay Area première 👍
Dinette: Episodes 1 & 2, dir. Shaina Feinberg, 2018, USA, 24 min. ❓
Whale, Hello There, dir. Chantel Houston, 2018, USA, 9 min. U.S. première 👍
Butch, dir. Harry Llyod, 2019, Australia, 11 min. International première👌
Hypotheticals, dir. Viridiana Lieberman, 2019, USA, 4 min. WORLD PREMIÈRE 👍
Girls Weekend, dir. Kyra Sedgwick, 2019, USA, 11 min. Bay Area première 👍

Fun in Boys Shorts (2019)

“Fun in Boys Shorts” shorts program
Saturday, June 22, 11:00 am, Castro Theatre
Sunday, June 30, 2:00 pm, Castro Theatre
total runtime: approximately 71 minutes

Scheduling note: if you want to do the classic double feature of Fun in Boys Shorts and Fun in Girls Shorts at the Castro, this year you can only do that on June 22. The second screening of FIGS will be in the East Bay this year.

Michael and Michael Are Gay: Dinner with Straights, dirs. Ian Alda & Annika Kurnick, 2018, USA, 9 min. 👌
Sweater, dir. Nick Borenstein, 2019, USA, 5 min. Bay Area première 👌
Stepdaddy, dir. Lisa Steen, 2019, USA, 8 min. Bay Area première 👎🏼
Matt & Dan: Zombie Ex, dir. Will Gordh, 2019, USA, 6 min. Bay Area première 👍
Clothes & Blow, dir. Sam Peter Jackson, 2018, UK, 23 min. West Coast première 👎🏼
What is the Sexy?, dirs. Dudley Beene & Heath Daniels, 2019, USA, 3 min. WORLD PREMIÈRE 🤮
Engaged, dir. David Scala, 2019, USA, 17 min. 👌