“First Impressions, Lasting Connections: Date Night Shorts”
Tuesday, June 24, 8:30pm, New Parkway Theater, Oakland
Update: This program will be available in the Digital Screening Room, June 23 through June 30, 2025, anywhere in the United States.
- Divine Intervention 👏, dir. Ravenna Tran, 2024, UK, 17 min.
- Hold Me Close 👏, dir. Aurora Brachman & LaTajh Simmons-Weaver, 2025, USA, 19 min.
- I’m the Most Racist Person I Know 💖, dir. Leela Varghese, 2025, Australia, 13 min.
- Un movimiento extraño (An Odd Turn) 😑, dir. Francisco Lezama, 2024, Argentina/France, 22 min., in Spanish with subtitles
Divine Intervention 👏, dir. Ravenna Tran, 2024, UK, 17 min.
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| Divine Intervention |
Frameline blurb: To get the promotion of their dreams, a mischievous earth-bound angel must get two ex-best friends to finally admit their love to each other.
Xena, an earthbound angel who specializes in “human connection,” is trying to earn their way back to “the top floor.” They are given a “code fuchsia” assignment: get ex-best friends Quinn and Kai to acknowledge their love.
Cute, romantic, well done. Highly recommended.
• IMDb • trailer • official website • Instagram: @Divine.Intervention.Film •
Hold Me Close 👏, dir. Aurora Brachman & LaTajh Simmons-Weaver, 2025, USA, 19 min.
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| Hold Me Close |
Frameline blurb: A study of a Black queer couple told through intimate voice recordings documented over the course of a season. A sensational doc short by Aurora Brachman (Joychild, Frameline45) and LaTajh Simmons-Weaver (Budget Paradise, Frameline49 “Homegrown” shorts program).
There is no plot to speak of, just a “slice of life” of a couple, going about their daily lives with voiceover of audio interviews conducted over a period of time. Subtle and delicate, but touching and interesting. Well done, highly recommended.
• IMDb • trailer • official website •
I’m the Most Racist Person I Know 💖, dir. Leela Varghese, 2025, Australia, 13 min.
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I’m the Most Racist Person I Know |
Frameline blurb: When Leela unexpectedly ends up on a date with another woman of color for the first time, it unravels prejudices she has long ignored. Directed by Leela Varghese (Lesbian Space Princess, Frameline49) and starring The Pitt's Shabana Azeez.
An embarrassing faux pas turns into an unplanned date. They have a nice evening as the conversation gets deeper, talking about being the only brown girl in a small town and thus imprinting on white girls. The dialogue was natural and felt authentic, giving me as an outsider a glimpse into an experience very different from my own. Must see.
• IMDb • trailer • official website •
Un movimiento extraño (An Odd Turn) 😑, dir. Francisco Lezama, 2024, Argentina/France, 22 min., in Spanish with subtitles
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An Odd Turn (Un movimiento extraño) |
Frameline blurb: A vision of an art theft, a fortuitous pendulum reading, and a high-stakes bet set museum security guard Lucrecia (Laila Maltz, 👍 Los miembros de la familia (Family Members), Frameline43) off on unexpected misadventures involving a new romance, currency exchanges, bisexual threesomes, and mindless temp work. Blending the mystical and the modern, Francisco Lezama’s deadpan comedy — winner of the Golden Bear for Best Short Film at the 2024 Berlin International Film Festival — unearths the sparks of curiosity and bliss buried in the mundane state of late-stage capitalism.
Lucrecia works crappy jobs in Buenos Aires and hooks up with guys, sometimes at work. She gets fired from her security guard job at the art museum, but she has had a vision that the museum will be robbed and also that the exchange rate on the U.S. dollar is about to skyrocket, so she uses her severance pay to buy dollars. The museum heist doesn’t happen, but sure enough, the exchange rate jumps from 15 to 60 overnight (and later again jumps to 106). Lucrecia hooks up with a random guy and tells him about Grindr. The guy then has a Grindr hookup with a guy who suggests they have a 3-way, so they do.
Not a bad film, though not one that particularly grabbed me, but first and foremost the only LGBTQ+ content seems to be that brief bisexual hookup, which seems a pretty tenuous basis for putting it in a queer film festival. Meh.
• IMDb • trailer • official website • Wikipedia [español] [English] •
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