99-cent Queer Video Fest

“99-cent Queer Video Fest” (curated shorts program, total runtime 123 min.)
Saturday, June 20, 2026, 5:00 PM, Festival Hub at Hamburger Mary’s
⚠️🔞 nudity and explicit sexual activity (see individual listings below)

(The shorts are listed here in alphabetical order, but were screened in a very different order.)

Frameline blurb on the shorts program as a whole:
Thirty-five years ago in the heady early days of 1990s New Queer Cinema, the spot to gather in community to view the cutting edge of queer shorts and pop culture was a weekly showcase called the “99¢ Queer Video Fest.” Held in a run-down bar in San Francisco’s Mission district with 99¢ entry, penny popcorn, and $1.50 well drinks, the event featured underground local shorts from an emerging scene mixed with VHS clips from the extant canon of queer classics and scraps of images pulled from TV shows of the time.

The magic ended when the owner sold the bar to straight people, but for 10 months, the Queer Video Fest played to a thirsty crowd of mixed disenfranchised queer folks, eager for on-screen representation and a punk-tinged, safe-sex positive good time.

Many of the filmmakers featured in the programs have gone on to be leading names of the queer cinema and arts movements: Cheryl Dunye, Jenni Olson, Angela Robinson, Mx. Justin Vivian Bond, David Weissman, Todd Verow, Barbara Hammer, and more… but most have taken quieter paths, and many are no longer with us.

As part of Frameline’s 50th Anniversary, original curator (and bartender!) Jeffrey Winter of The Film Collaborative assembles a representative sample of the films we were watching back then, some remembered and cherished, some not-so but should have been. And yes, in keeping with tradition, there will be drinks flowing while we watch and celebrate!

Executive Producer: Jeffrey Winter ◦ Producer: David Averbach

🤩 575 Castro St., dir. Jenni Olson, 2008, USA, 7 min.

575 Castro St.

Frameline blurb: Harvey Milk is resurrected in this poignant short, which sets an original audiotape he recorded — to be played in the event of his assassination — in a recreation of his Castro Street camera shop.

My take: When Gus Van Sant made the biopic Milk, he recreated Harvey’s camera shop in its original location, and then let Jenni Olson make a short homage to Harvey Milk and his legacy. If you haven’t ever heard the recording Harvey made to be played in the event of his assassination, you must see this film, or find that audio somewhere. Even if you’ve heard it many times, though, this is a worthy tribute to a pivotal figure in LGBTQ+ rights, in San Francisco, and most especially in the Castro. Must see.

• IMDb • Official website • Filmmaker • Instagram / Facebook: @JenniOlsonSF • preview • other •

😁 976–, dir. David Weissman, 1987, USA, 3 min.
⚠️ There may (or may not) be a real 976-DISH, but it’s not the one shown here, so save your money!

976–

Frameline blurb: A spiritually titillating alternative to phone sex.

My take: Cute and fun. The IMDb page has a link for a press kit, from a previous Frameline, but “page not found.” Those 976 sex lines are tie-urrrd, you know: they “touch [your] body, but not [your] soul.” Gossipy drag queen to the rescue! “976-DISH, I know it all, I see it all, and I tell it all!” Oh, well. Very colorful, an entertaining amuse-bouche. Highly recommended.

• IMDb • Official website • Filmmaker • Instagram • Facebook • preview • other • watch online (at time index 16:22; the short Song from an Angel follows immediately after) •

😀 B-Girls from Planet Q, dir. Jon Bush, 1991, USA, 5 min.

B-Girls from Planet Q

Frameline blurb: The incomparable Mx. Justin Vivian Bond and comedian Mark Davis star in this faux homo promo by the late Jon Bush, one of the 99¢ Queer Video Fest’s earliest and most prolific filmmakers. Produced by Shan Carr, B-Girls from Planet Q was commissioned for the original Out for Laughs queer TV sketch comedy show.

My take: A fun look back, with Mx. Justin Vivian Bond years before Shortbus. Worth seeing, if you can find it. Recommended.

• IMDb • Official website • Filmmaker • Instagram • Facebook • preview • other •

🙂 Body, dir. Adriana Roberts, 1992, USA, 1 min.

Body

Frameline blurb: One minute of nonbinary trans bodily exploration, shot in Pixelvision with a Fisher-Price PXL2000, in glorious b/w 15fps 120x90 resolution.

My take: Not low-budget, more like zero-budget, down to the toy camera. Interesting as a glimpse at home videos before smart phones, and before even camcorders were widely available. Recommended.

• IMDb • Official website • Filmmaker • Instagram • Facebook • preview • other •

🤩 Brother to Brother: An Excerpt from Tongues Untied, dir. Marlon T. Riggs, 1989, USA, 4 min.

Brother to Brother
(photo copyright Signifyin’ Works)

Frameline blurb: The opening 3+ minutes from the seminal documentary on Black gay life, Emmy Award-winning director Marlon T. Riggs’ Tongues Untied (1989) uses poetry, personal testimony, rap, and performance (featuring poet Essex Hemphill and others), to describe the homophobia and racism that confront Black gay men. Courtesy of Signifyin' Works. Image of Marlon Riggs & Essex Hemphill from Tongues Untied by Marlon Riggs. Copyright 1989 Signifyin' Works.

My take: Tongues Untied is a compelling demonstration of the power of hearing people’s stories in their own words. I saw it at Frameline14 back in 1989, and I was blown away. It is unreservedly a must see for absolutely everyone, but the good news is that if you have a library card (note: any California resident can get a SF Public Library card, even if you live outside San Francisco) you can watch it online for free! If you want the physical DVD or Blu-ray, you can get that from the Criterion Collection.

• Tongues Untied: IMDb • Official website • Filmmaker • Instagram • Facebook • preview • Wikipedia • watch for free (with a library card from a participating public library) • Criterion (DVD/Blu-ray) • Letterboxd •

🔞👎 Built for Endurance, dir. Todd Verow, 1993, USA, 7 min.
⚠️🔞 Violence, explicit sexual material

Built for Endurance

Frameline blurb: A violent gay hustler and his so-called girlfriend attack a man who has been stalking them.

My take: Perhaps Todd Verow’s most infamous work is Frisk, which was so bad, when it played as the closing night film of Frameline19 (1995), not only did I walk out (something I almost never did back then), I stayed in the lobby buttonholing other people storming out in disgust, and at least a dozen of us stayed in the lobby until the end of the film so we could go back in and boo, with Todd Verow, Marcus Hu, and multiple cast members (including the previously delightful Raoul O’Connell) seated in a club mid-theater. The write-up in the San Francisco Chronicle the next day mentioned that the booing was louder than the applause, something I wear as a badge of honor.

So you might get the impression that I’m not a huge Todd Verow fan (as well as not a huge fan of Dennis Cooper, on whose book Frisk was based). Built for Endurance isn’t nearly that bad, but it isn’t great, either. Aside from the violence, the film spends an inordinate amount of time with the girlfriend character going on about sharing her last two cigarettes. Recommended only for serious devotees of Todd Verow or historians of queer film; otherwise, not recommended.

• IMDb • Official website • Filmmaker • Instagram • Facebook • preview (rent or buy the whole short on Vimeo VOD) • other •

🙂 Chickula: Teenage Vampire, dir. Angela Robinson, 1994, USA, 5 min.

Chickula: Teenage Vampire

Frameline blurb: In this parody of 1950s horror trailers, a lesbian vampire terrorizes a suburban high school.

My take: Chickula: Teenage Vampire played in Frameline19 (1995), although the write-up then doesn’t say any more than the above. It’s a cute little bit of fluff, although more than a little hard to find. Recommended.

• IMDb • Official website • Filmmaker • Instagram • Facebook • preview • other •

🙂 Cunt Dykula, dir. K. K., 1993, USA, 3 min., no dialogue

Cunt Dykula

Frameline blurb: In a campy collision of vampirism and queer desire, a lone dyke wanderer must negotiate the terms of survival — and intimacy — with the terrifying Cunt Dykula.

My take: A cute little home movie. Recommended, if you can find it.

• IMDb • Official website • Filmmaker • Instagram • Facebook • preview • other •

🔞🤩  Dyketactics, dir. Barbara Hammer, 1974, USA, 4 min., no dialogue

Dyketactics
(image ©Barbara Hammer, et al.)

Frameline blurb: Heralded as the first lesbian lovemaking film made by a lesbian, Dyketactics reveals Barbara Hammer’s aesthetic connecting sight and touch. (Image courtesy of the Estate of Barbara Hammer, New York; Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York; Company Gallery, New York; and KOW, Berlin.)

My take: Years before the first radical faerie gathering (per se), Barbara Hammer and a group of friends went out to a meadow somewhere in the Napa Valley to cavort naked and make love. Essential viewing for any student of early lesbian filmmaking, or generally early LGBTQ+ films, a testament to embracing your sexuality, your own body, and your identity. Must see.

Dyketactics also played at Frameline14 (1990).

• IMDb • Official website • Filmmaker • Instagram • Facebook • preview [note: there is also a YouTube video that purports to be the full short film, but is not] • other •

🔞👎 Fireworks, dir. Kenneth Anger, 1947, USA, 20 min., no dialogue
⚠️ Violence, non-consensual sex, explicit sexual material

Fireworks

Frameline blurb: A landmark of both experimental and queer filmmaking, Kenneth Anger’s Fireworks is a bizarre, disturbing dreamscape of violation, rape, and homoerotic sadomasochism.

My take: No. Just no. Don’t waste your time. Not recommended.

• IMDb • Official website • Filmmaker • Instagram • Facebook • preview • other •

🙂 Friendly, dir. Texas Tomboy Brand Productions, 1993, USA, 3 min.

Friendly

Frameline blurb: James Dean discovers rave culture.

My take: Friendly played in Frameline20 in 1996. It’s a guerrilla film, somewhat avant-garde, but worth seeing if you can find it. Recommended.

• IMDb • Official website • Filmmaker • Instagram • Facebook • preview • other •

🙂 Girls Will Be Boys, dir. Texas Tomboy Brand Productions, 1993, USA, 3 min.

Girls Will Be Boys

Frameline blurb: A drag king safer sex date.

My take: I honestly don’t remember this one clearly (the hazards of seeing 18 shorts in a single program), but my impression was it was pretty good. Recommended, if you can find it.

• IMDb • Official website • Filmmaker • Instagram • Facebook • preview • other •

🙂 Ifé, dir. H. Lenn Keller, 1993, USA, 5 min.
(also screened in “Nineties and Zeros Fucks”)

Ifé

Frameline blurb: Cruising the streets of San Francisco in her vintage Buick, a charming Black French lesbian shares her butch Casanova philosophy, “You can never experience too many women.” An irresistible debut short from the late photographer, filmmaker, and co-founder of the Bay Area Lesbian Archives, H. Lenn Keller. Newly restored by UCLA Film & Television Archive in collaboration with Frameline.

A French lesbian (almost certainly an American native speaker of English portraying someone from France) drives around, reminiscing about women she’s been with. No sexually explicit images. Interesting, worth seeing as a time capsule. (Did you know that cigarette lighters in cars were once used not only for powering random 12V devices, but also for lighting cigarettes??) Recommended.

• IMDb • Official website • Filmmaker • Instagram • Facebook • watch on YouTube • other • Ife •

😁 Shaving the Castro, dir. Johnny Symons, 1994, USA, 4 min.

Shaving the Castro

Frameline blurb: In an old-time Castro Street barber shop, longtime straight residents and a new generation of queer folks find common ground in style and community.

My take: Shaving the Castro also played at Frameline20 (1996). It was a nice portrait of a business that was already a touchstone in the 1990s, and it’s still there 30 years later. Definitely worth seeing, highly recommended.

• IMDb • Official website • Filmmaker • Instagram • Facebook • preview • other •

🔞👎 Skullfuck, dir. Joe Kelly & Danny Fass, 1991, USA, 1 min., no dialogue

Skullfuck

Frameline blurb: Writer and critic Matias Viegener has described this one-minute masterpiece oozing with early-90s queer skinhead lust as “more than a one-line joke, a way to countermand the cultural primacy of a rational thought over carnal greed,” but it is the film’s final shots that will turn your stomach and stay with you forever.

My take: Don’t waste this minute of your life. Not recommended.

• IMDb • Official website • Filmmaker • Instagram • Facebook • preview • other •

🤩 Song from an Angel, dir. David Weissman, 1988, USA, 5 min.

Song from an Angel

Frameline blurb: Rodney Price, of the legendary San Francisco theater troupe The Angels of Light, gave this incredible performance two weeks prior to his death from AIDS in 1988.

My take: With advances in antiretrovirals, PrEP and PEP, and such, it’s easy even for those of us who lived through it to forget the swath that AIDS in the 1980s cut through our community, and especially our artistic community. At the time of filming Song from an Angel, Rodney Price was less than a year past being diagnosed with AIDS, and only two weeks from his death. He chose a jaunty musical number about that situation, and sings it beautifully. Definitely a must see, especially if you are too young to remember the 1980s.

• IMDb • Official website • Filmmaker • Instagram • Facebook • preview • watch the full short film (at time index 18:55, immediately following 976–) •

🙂 Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, dir. Todd Haynes, 1987, USA, 43 min.
⚠️ Eating disorders

Superstar: The Karen
Carpenter Story

Frameline blurb: Surprise Film: Don't miss this rare opportunity to catch a newly-restored early masterpiece by recent Frameline Queer Lens Award recipient Todd Haynes! The iconic American auteur lays the groundwork for his later forays into unconventional and unforgettable music films like Velvet Goldmine (1998), I'm Not There (2007), and The Velvet Underground (2021).

My take: The opportunity to catch this film is rare because it got embroiled in serious legal issues, since the filmmaker did not acquire the rights to the music. Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story is a “docudrama” about the singer’s rise to fame and descent into anorexia and bulimia, plus some salacious hints at her brother Richard having a secret. It’s interesting, although it’s hard to tell how accurate the story is. It’s amusing, and a cult phenomenon, probably mostly because it’s so difficult to find. Recommended.

• IMDb • Official website • Filmmaker • Instagram • Facebook • preview • Wikipedia •

😁 Vanilla Sex, dir. Cheryl Dunye, 1992, USA, 4 min.

Vanilla Sex

Frameline blurb: Cheryl Dunye muses on the slang term of the title: is it who you do, or what you do?

My take: On a panel with several white lesbians who were into BDSM, Cheryl Dunye (The Watermelon Woman, Frameline20 opening night) encountered for the first time the use of the term “vanilla sex” to describe sex without toys. She had previously been derided for having “vanilla sex,” meaning that she had sex with several white women. Dunye muses on the contradiction in this well done personal essay. Worth seeing, highly recommended, and if you haven’t seen The Watermelon Woman, you should.

• IMDb • Official website • Filmmaker • Instagram / Facebook: @CherylDunye • preview • watch on YouTube •

Comments

Post a Comment