San Francisco’s Frameline Film Festival is the oldest queer film festival in the world (it started in 1976). It is also one of the most progressive Fests with an enviable reputation for its excellent diverse programming. The festival is organized by Frameline, a nonprofit media arts organization whose admirable mission statement is “to change the world through the power of queer cinema“.
This year it was also almost the cause for the Queeeguru Review Team coming to blows. Committed to providing our usual TOP TEN PICKS @THE FEST we simply couldn’t agree to confine our selection to just that. So if you are mathematically inclined (!) you’ll notice that for the very first time we are in love with sweet 13 (and we still haven’t viewed the highly anticipated “Everybody Loves Jaime” or No Straight Lines: The Rise of Queer Comics. As usual, they are listed in alphabetical order,
This year the Fest is split in two, so as well as In-Person Screenings, the very good news that most of them are
also available online NATIONALLY for a limited time : check https://www.frameline.org/festival/ for full detailsAILEY: Filmmaker JAMILA WIGNOT’S new documentary of modern dance auteur, the tortured genius Alvin Ailey makes for such hypnotic viewing. With a combination of audio interviews with the man himself and some breathtaking archival footage of his early performances, she gives an intimate portrait of one of the greatest interpreters of the universality of the African-American experience.
BEING THUNDER Is the heart-touching tale of SHERENTÉ HARRIS, a two-spirit genderqueer teenager from the NARRAGANSETT TRIBE in Rhode Island. Sherenté an articulate and determined teen has the full support of her family and most of her tribe. However French filmmaker STEPHANIE LAMORRE‘s camera captures bias from some of the judges in the traditional shawl dance competitions Sherenté loves to participate. No spoilers here but there is a scene when Sherenté is surrounded by her family waiting to see which Colleges will offer her a place that will bring tears to your eyes.
BOY MEETS BOY : In this film by DANIEL SANCHEZ LOPEZ two gay men meet each other on the dancefloor in Berlin after 24 hours of clubbing. At first, it’s the hazy intimacy of drugs that bring them together but soon, as they talk and chill, they fall into the comfort of compatibility. The magic of the film creeps up on you unaware. Its structure hides behind the ebb and flow of the two central characters’ dialogue. The easy-flowing conversation is the side effect of HANNAH RENTON and Lopez’s script never drawing attention to itself. Its visual appeal is from camerawork that disappears. The use of silence is the most powerful part of the sound design
FIREBIRD is an enormously satisfying and complete film. It tells a full tale of life, and love, and loss from its beginning right up to an end that could never need or want a sequel. PEETER REBANE‘s story of two Soviet military recruits, a pilot officer and a private, falling in love on a military base during the 70s cold war, is based on a true story. Skeptical as we are about stories ‘based on’ truth, people’s ages and weights on dating profiles might make that same claim, there is an undeniably human element to this story that grips the heart and mind with a sense of both individuality and history
GENDERATION : MONIKA TREUT is a queer German filmmaker with some 20 films under her belt. Her very first feature with SEDUCTION:THE CRUEL WOMAN, a film that explores sadomasochistic sex practices.. With Genderation, Treut goes back to the West Coast of the US to do a follow-up on Gendernauts a documentary that she made some 20 years. Most of her protagonists are artistic and intellectual trans who have enjoyed varying degrees of success and happiness, and all, without exception, finding time to bitch about how expensive the cost of life is nowadays. It’s an intriguing look back to a time when transitioning was just becoming public in enlightened communities in places like San Francisco.
If there is one thing we all need this summer it is an exhilarating feel-good movie to lift our spirits and take us out of our post-Covid doom. LIN MANUEL-MIRANDA’S “IN THE HEIGHTS” is just that and so much more. Director JON M CHU (CRAZY RICH ASIANS) gives us this exuberant block party in NY’S WASHINGTON HEIGHTS which may be based on indiscriminate racism towards the Latino & Hispanic communities, yet still somehow comes over more as a celebration of life.
JUMP DARLING : When you reach the end of the road you are on, what can you do? There are two answers, you stop or change direction. In CLORIS LEACHMAN’s final film made prior to her death, both these alternates are explored, and the poignancy is inescapable. Leachman plays Grams, the aging grandmother grown tired, frail, and distanced from the passions that engulfed her earlier years. Dreams of joining the ice capades are barely a memory. Facing a slow exit from her life, or the inertia of a retirement home, she grapples with what little sovereignty she has left. It is an exquisite swan song for one helluva wonderfully actress and person
POTATO DREAMS OF AMERICA queer filmmaker Wes Hurley’s excellent autobiographical tale of his journey from Russia as a young gay immigrant is the perfect choice for the opening night gala. Maybe a tad patchy in parts but it’s a joyous wee film with some wonderful surprises like an adorable Jonathan Bennett as Jesus and an almost unrecognizable Lea Delaria giving a scene-stealing performance.
PS Burn The Letter Please: In 2014 a trove of letters was discovered out of the blue in the storage locker of Los Angeles DJ and talent agent RENO MARTIN. They chronicled the joys, squabbles, and everyday lives of New York City drag queens during the 1950s and 60s. The letters found their way from producer CRAIG OLSEN into the hands of filmmakers JENNIFER TIEXIERA and MICHAEL SELIGMAN who turned this wonderful unique source of queer history into an engaging and compelling documentary that reveals a world that was such an important part of our community’s history in pre-Stonewall days.
REBEL DYKES: In the opening minutes of this powerful documentary we hear a voice that says ‘ we were young, working-class and poor: we were dykes NOT lesbians.” It is a statement of fact but there is a slight edge to it which we take as a warning not to misinterpret who this group of queer women really were. The film starts in the early 1980’s when a group of women set up a Camp outside the RAF MILITARY BASE ON GREENHAM COMMON in the UK. They were ostensibly there to protest the fact that the Government was allowing the US Military to store nuclear CRUISE MISSILES there.
Even though the documentary ends with a ‘where are they now’ section and most of the women seemed enveloped in some form of respectability, they still come over as good-spirited and still anarchic and funny(!). It’s just that their fierceness has mellowed. Kudos to filmmakers HARRI SHANAHAN, Sian A. Williams, and SIOBHAN FAHEY for making this fascinating record. Our queer history so needs to be told, so we can all remember the journey that others have made on our behalfs.
SUMMER OF 85′ The queer French auteur FRANÇOIS OZON turns to a very English novel for the source of his latest bittersweet romance. Evidently, he read the 1982 NOVEL DANCE ON MY GRAVE. when he was a teenager and this story of teen angst must have really resounded deeply with him that almost four decades later it inspires him to make this wonderfully sad love story.
SWAN SONG Veteran German/American actor Udo Kier who starred in both Werner Fassbinder movies and his bed, gives a sublime performance as a retired campy hairdresser and beautician living in a Seniors Home who is summed by the Last Will of one of his old rich dead customers who insists he makes her look stunning for her funeral. This gentle delightful dramedy is a wonderfully poignant look at the perils of being old, gay, and alone, and which demands being seen more than once.
TRUMAN & TENNESSEE: For those of us who might be outrageously, but fairly, accused of being more interested in mentioning that we have read TRUMAN CAPOTE or TENNESSE WILLIAMS than actually reading them, this is the perfect documentary. Its mixture of biography, gossip, observations, and anecdotes in their famously distinct voices conveys a sense of both their intellects, outlooks, quirks, and flaws. heir lives are revealed by audiotapes, TV interviews, and readings by JIM PARSONS as Capote and ZACHARY QUINTO as Williams. Initially giving a sense of their artistic outlook and motivations, the circumstances of their friendships, the overlaps in their lives, and then splitting off into their less appealing sides that led inevitably to differences of opinions and acrimony.
IN PERSON: JUNE 10–27, 2021 STREAMING NATIONALLY: JUNE 17–27, 2021 https://www.frameline.org/festival
Labels: 2021, Film Fest, Frameline, San Francisco, Top Picks
