Frameline39: San Francisco International LGBTQ Film Festival

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Proud to be the Official Airline of the Frameline Film Festival.

Deep Run p.54

contents

All About E p.46

5 Welcome to Frameline39 10 Sponsors 13 About Frameline 19 Opening Film & Gala: I Am Michael

21 Centerpiece:

The Summer of Sangaile

Larry Kramer In Love and Anger p.36

32 Showcase Programs 41 Special Programs •

23 Centerpiece: Out to Win

Transtastic p.66

25 Closing Night

Film & Party: Bare

26 Frameline Award: Jeffrey Schwarz

Margarita, with a Straw p.49

28 First Feature Award 29 Game Changers: Sexuality & Sports

•

Special Preview Retrospective

42 46 53 P1

US Features

62 70 71 72 73 116 118 120

Shorts

Fun in Boys Shorts p.63

World Cinema Documentaries Pull Out: Schedule at a Glance Ticket Info Ticket Order Form Festival Venues Festival Info

Jason and Shirley p.44

Frameline Board & Staff Members & Donors Film Index Desert Migration p.54

I Love Her But p.64 While You Weren’t Looking p.52 Beautiful Something p.43

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Š 2015 AT&T Intellectual Property. All rights reserved.

Equality We’re proud to support Frameline for its outstanding advocacy work on behalf of the LGBTQ community. Because everything is better when everyone works together.

Congratulations to the AT&T Audience Award winners of Frameline39: San Francisco International LGBTQ Film Festival.

THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HERE...

The 39th San Francisco International LGBTQ Film Festival.

welcome!

Alongside the ever-changing skyline of the San Francisco Bay Area, the strength of Frameline’s 39-year Festival history stands as a testament to the continued vitality of LGBTQ storytelling. Gathering together to celebrate, educate, and inspire ourselves remains a fundamental conduit for real change in the world, as we communally honor our queer past, grab hold of the present, and define our own future.

Featuring nearly 180 films from more than 30 countries, Frameline39’s lineup of LGBTQ film takes you out the door, around the block, over the rainbow, and right back home again. In addition to our central showcases, we’ve put together special programs, dynamic parties, a sneak preview, and more — where filmmakers, actors, producers, artists, screenwriters, and movie lovers from around the world can gather in celebration of a continuously evolving queer cinemascape.

We are especially thrilled to open and close with two American directorial feature debuts that boldly explore the complexity of queer experience. Our Opening Night film, I Am Michael, is the provocative true story of Michael Glatze — a former gay rights advocate who renounced his homosexuality — featuring terrific, compassionate performances and a daringly nuanced approach. Our Closing Night film is Bare, a drama that is just as intoxicating as it is challenging in its compelling portrait of two young women in small-town Nevada searching for expanded horizons.

With visual bravura that can only be described as sumptuous, our Centerpiece Narrative, The Summer of Sangaile, dives into the world of a shy teenage girl, obsessed with stunt planes, who is lured from her solitude by a vivacious new acquaintance. The inspiring Out to Win is our Centerpiece Documentary, highlighting the struggles and triumphs of the brave LGBTQ athletes who have become game-changers in the realm of professional sports.

In fact, a number of this year’s selections prove that, from the Olympics to college campuses, the worlds of sports, sexuality, and gender identity are intersecting in new, dynamic, and often controversial ways. The Festival shines a spotlight on films that capture this momentum on and off the courts, including four more documentaries (To Russia with Love, Game Face, Scrum, and Mind/Game), as well as a shorts program.

Other highly anticipated documentaries at Frameline39 include A Woman Like Me, co-directed by Alex Sichel and Elizabeth Giamatti; Larry Kramer in Love and Anger, directed by Jean Carlomusto; and Tab Hunter Confidential, directed by prolific documentarian Jeffrey Schwarz, whom we are pleased to honor with this year’s Frameline Award for his incomparable achievements in documenting the lives of queer activists and screen icons.

Frameline is also proud to have provided Completion Funding to seven remarkable Frameline39 films: Deep Run, Dyke Central: Episodes 6–10, Feelings Are Facts: The Life of Yvonne Rainer, From This Day Forward, How to Win at Checkers (Every Time), The Royal Road, and Visible Silence.

Whether you’re headed to the Castro, Roxie, Victoria, or Elmwood theatres, or to our new East Bay venue, the Piedmont, there’s truly no place like Frameline39. Do join us in celebrating the courage, the heart, the brains, and the beauty of this year’s unforgettable queer cinema showcase.

See you at the movies!

Frances Wallace Executive Director

Desiree Buford Director of Exhibition & Programming

Peter L. Stein Senior Programmer

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HOW DO WE HELP STOP HIV? A. PREVENT IT. B. TEST FOR IT. C. TREAT IT. D. ALL OF THE ABOVE. Learn how it all works together at HelpStopTheVirus.com © 2015 Gilead Sciences, Inc. All rights reserved. UNBC1856 03/15

11 days of stories that don’t always get told

Photo by Barak Shrama

Of all the many things we do to support Pride, one of our very favorites is Frameline: the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival. It’s a wonderful way to promote understanding and acceptance of the LGBT community, and we look forward to it every year.

Wells Fargo is proud to sponsor the festival, and honored to participate in Pride all month long.

Frameline and Wells Fargo — supporting the Bay Area’s own

wellsfargo.com © 2015 Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. All rights reserved. Member FDIC. ECG-1245629

WINE ENTHUSIAST RATINGS SCORE OUT OF 100 POINTS

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sponsors continued

event production

event venues

catering + beverages

hospitality ..21st Amendment Brewery ..Catch ..City Car Share ..Escape from New York Pizza ..Heliotrope San Francisco ..Kabuki Springs & Spa ..The Karpel Group ..Kind Snacks ..Lolinda ..New Conservatory Theatre Center ..Poesia ..Uber

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FRAMELINE THANKS THE FOLLOWING FOR

about frameline

THEIR GENEROUS YEAR-ROUND SUPPORT:

FRAMELINE’S MISSION is to change the world through the power of queer cinema. As a media arts nonprofit, Frameline’s programs connect filmmakers and audiences in San Francisco and around the world.

EXHIBITION Founded in 1977, the San Francisco International LGBTQ Film Festival is the longest-running, largest, and most widely recognized LGBTQ film exhibition event in the world. As a community event with an annual attendance of 65,000, the Festival is the most prominent and well-attended LGBTQ arts program in the Bay Area. Frameline also presents year-round exhibitions, including Frameline Encore, a free film series screening in both Oakland and San Francisco, which highlights diverse, socially relevant works. Year-round programs also include members-only sneak previews and special events, as well as special screenings and events featuring directors, actors, and other queer media icons.

DISTRIBUTION Established in 1981, Frameline Distribution is the only nonprofit distributor that solely caters to LGBTQ film. Frameline’s collection has over 250 award-winning films, and we have partnerships with universities, public libraries, film festivals, and community groups. In 2008, Frameline Distribution launched Youth In Motion, a program that provides free LGBTQ-themed films and curriculum resources to Gay-Straight Alliances nationwide. In 2011, we launched Frameline Voices, an effort to showcase diverse LGBTQ stories with an emphasis on films by and about people of color, transgender people, youth, and elders. The content featured on Frameline Voices is free, and you can now enjoy the best of our distribution collection any time on your computer or mobile device.

FILMMAKER SUPPORT Since 1990, more than 125 films and videos have been completed with assistance from the Frameline Completion Fund. Grants are awarded annually and provide much-needed support to filmmakers for their final editing and lab work. Once completed, these films often go on to receive international exposure. Submissions include documentary, educational, narrative, animation, and experimental projects about LGBTQ people and their communities.

JOIN US WE THANK ALL OF OUR DONORS AND PARTNERS FOR FURTHERING OUR MISSION AND SUPPORTING LGBTQ MEDIA ARTS.

The support of our Frameline Members helps to champion the Festival and all of our year-round programs.

By joining the most respected LGBTQ arts organization in the nation, you help to deliver thought-provoking films documenting LGBTQ lives and supporting LGBTQ filmmakers — and our members enjoy exciting benefits, too!

For more information about Frameline Membership, go online: www.frameline.org/join.

145 9th Street, Suite 300 | San Francisco, CA 94103 | 415.703.8650 phone 415.861.1404 fax | info@frameline.org | www.frameline.org

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It feels good to give back.

And together with our generous customers and employees, Macy’s averages more than $1 million a week to initiatives important to you and your community – arts, education, the environment, HIV/AIDS, and women’s health and wellness.

It adds up to $69 million a year. It’s a good feeling we can all share, and to us, that’s the magic of giving.

Arnold & Porter is proud to support

Frameline We share your mission of supporting positive representations of the LGBT community Arnold & Porter is deeply committed to diversity and equality. Our attorneys have taken on high-impact cases supporting marriage equality and fighting against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender expression and identity.

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YOU ARE PART OF A GREATER COMMUNITY. Union Bank® believes in the power of partnerships. That’s why we partner with communities and organizations to make a positive difference in the places where we work and live. To us, building a strong community is the most valuable investment of all.

Union Bank is proud to support Frameline39 San Francisco International LGBTQ Film Festival. unionbank.com

©2015 MUFG Union Bank, N.A. All rights reserved. Member FDIC. Union Bank is a registered trademark and brand name of MUFG Union Bank, N.A.

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Lawn Club

With real grass beneath our feet, miles out at sea, playfulness came naturally.

Experience a Europe vacation where each experience on board is as exhilarating as the destination itself. Unwind in luxurious accommodations.

Indulge in a spa treatment at sea. Dine in up to 12 distinctive restaurants where the menus are crafted by a James Beard-featured chef. There’s simply no better way to discover the Old World.

That’s modern luxury SM Celebrity Cruises is a proud supporter of the Frameline39 San Francisco International LGBTQ Film Festival.

Visit your local AAA branch, call 877-363-6649 or go to AAA.com/celebrity. ©2015 Celebrity Cruises Inc. Ships’ registry: Malta and Ecuador.

opening night I Am Michael

DIR Justin

Kelly 2015 USA 100 min

In a controversial and very public transformation, co-founder of Young Gay America magazine and gay rights advocate Michael Glatze shocked his followers when he renounced his homosexuality and embraced a heterosexual life. Justin Kelly’s compelling directorial debut presents Glatze’s journey in an admirably measured and non-judgmental fashion. In the beginning, Michael (James Franco) is a joyful, committed queer activist, living with his boyfriend Bennett, (Zachary Quinto), in the Castro, where they both write for XY Magazine. A job offer for Bennett soon takes them to Halifax, Canada, where the two settle into a seemingly fulfilling life with their new lover, Tyler (Charlie Carver), and Michael launches YGA, becoming a leading voice on issues of young gay experience. When a health scare leads Michael to reflect on a past he has never fully confronted, he searches for deeper meaning in and beyond life. Flirting with meditation and Buddhism, Michael ultimately seeks his answers in the Bible and, eventually, heterosexuality on the road to his truth.

It would be easy to condemn a person like Michael Glatze, in response to his own condemnation of homosexuality, but I Am Michael chooses a more complicated route. Director Kelly, a protégé of executive producer Gus Van Sant (Milk), boldly confronts the complexity of identity within a society that demands that self-definition fit in a tidy box, whatever that box may be, and Franco plays Glatze as a sincere and committed man, albeit one who can be self-serving and hurtful when pursuing his particular devotions. With a beguiling supporting cast and a memorable score composed in part by Jake Shears (Scissor Sisters), this incredible true story of one man’s identity transformation is sure to provoke discussion and even, perhaps, some measure of compassion.

proudly sponsored by

Thursday, June 18, 7:00 pm · Castro

Film & Gala: $75 members, $90 general · IAMM18C Film Only: $30 members, $35 general · IAMM18C Gala Only: $45 members, $60 general · GALA18T

— ROD ARMSTRONG

gala

After I Am Michael, join us for our dazzling Opening Night Gala at Terra Gallery (511 Harrison Street at First Street). Enjoy the finest local cuisine, heavenly libations, and exquisite desserts from our Gala partners. Lounge away or get your groove on the dance floor. Indulge yourself, proudly sponsored by even flirt a little — as we kick off Frameline’s 39th year of celebrating queer cinema.

GALA PARTNERS

E. Cee Productions

GALA EVENT PRODUCER

Tito’s Handmade Vodka Kokomo Winery The Hugh Groman Group

Simply Bliss Catering & Event Planning Supperclub

The Front Porch Small Potatoes Catering Curryous Catering Poco Dolce Confections

Guests must be 21 or over to enjoy beer, wine, or cocktails.

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EVERYONE IN OUR COMMUNITY IS A HERO.

Proudly supporting Frameline39 since 1999 Funding the arts for 35 years

horizons foundation Fueling the LGBT Movement 20 SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL LGBTQ FILM FESTIVAL

www.horizonsfoundation.org

centerpiece The Summer of Sangaile | Sangailé DIR Alanté Kavaïté 2015 Lithuania, France, Netherlands 84 min

In Lithuanian with English subtitles

Seventeen-year-old Sangaile is mesmerized by the aerial poetry of watching stunt planes in flight.

A brooding, directionless girl trapped in a cage of adolescent fear and self-doubt, she meets Auste at an aeronautics show during her summer vacation. The vivacious Auste watches Sangaile watch the acrobatic airplanes and pursues the other girl, inviting her into her own group of friends. Director Alanté Kavaïté beautifully captures the shifting dynamics of group flirtation and friendship, as Auste and Sangaile single each other out, and the gang falls away.

Despite different backgrounds, the two click. Sangaile is privileged, spending an idle summer in Mid-Century Modern splendor at her family’s country house. Auste lives in a concrete apartment block and works in the power plant’s restaurant. While Sangaile’s bedroom is bare, Auste’s room explodes with retro, DIY kitsch. Where Sangaile is afraid to pursue her fascination with flying, Auste explores her creativity fearlessly, making clothes, jelly, and art photos. Under Auste’s spell, Sangaile begins to peel off her protective layers — starting with her shirt, when Auste measures her for a dress.

Winner of the prestigious World Cinema Dramatic Directing Award at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, the film tells its story with a visual bravura that is pure pleasure. Floating aerial shots of the lush countryside follow sharply observed domestic still lifes; scenes of Sangaile’s self-harm are rendered in cool shorthand, while the visceral, vertiginous flying sequences are not for the faint of heart. The result is a rich portrait of first love — the physical infatuation, the tumultuous emotions, and the pure joy of desire — neatly expressed by the image of a lit-up tutu, tossed into the air.

Tuesday, June 23, 7:00 pm · Castro $12 members, $15 general · SUMM23C proudly sponsored by

— MONICA NOLAN

This film contains depictions of self-harm.

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The 2014 World Champion Giants are Proud to Support

Thank you to everyone that celebrated LGBTQ Pride Night with the A’s on June 17.

Partial proceeds benefited Frameline and AIDS Project East Bay.

Frameline and the LGBTQ Film Community

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49ERS FOUNDATION IS PROUD TO SUPPORT THE FRAMELINE39 SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL LGBTQ FILM FESTIVAL

22 SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL LGBTQ FILM FESTIVAL

3/31/15 11:55 AM

centerpiece Out to Win

DIR Malcolm Ingram 2015 USA, Canada 99 min

SPlTLIGHT SPORTS

For a long time, LGBT people were either left on the sidelines or completely pushed off the court of professional sports. But now that last closet — or locker room — door is bursting open, thanks to a growing number of bold activist athletes who are daring to come out. Their stories, and the ongoing challenges facing professional LGBT athletes, are told in Out to Win, the riveting new documentary from award-winning director Malcolm Ingram (Small Town Gay Bar, Frameline30; Continental, Frameline37).

Framed by the story of one of 2014’s most discussed athletes, football’s Michael Sam (from his coming out as a college player, to his selection in the NFL draft, to generalized “locker-room panic,” to the kiss heard ’round the world), Out to Win features in-depth interviews with an allstar lineup of trailblazing lesbian and gay professional athletes: tennis legends Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova; Jason Collins, the first openly gay active NBA player; former NBA player John Amaechi; former pro baseball player Billy Bean; WNBA superstar Brittney Griner; activist and former NFL player Wade Davis; and retired NFL player David Kopay, who was the first former NFL player to come out as gay. With remarkable access and insightful commentary from leading sports journalists, agents, coaches, activists, and fans, the film contextualizes the struggles and triumphs of these brave, game-changing athletes.

Out to Win proves that professional sports not only provide thrilling, sometimes agonizing, spectacles — they have a powerful influence on society and can be an incredible force for change.

Smart, moving, and uplifting, this is definitely not just a movie for sports fans. This is a film that will have everyone cheering.

Wednesday, June 24, 6:30 pm · Castro $12 members, $15 general · OUTT24C proudly sponsored by

— CHARLES PURDY

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From the network that brought you THE L WORD and QUEER AS FOLK , ®

ShowtIme IS proud to brIng you theSe orIgInal SerIeS ®

Proud to sPonsor you ©2015 Showtime Networks Inc. All rights reserved. SHOWTIME and related marks are trademarks of Showtime Networks Inc., a CBS Company. You must be a subscriber of Showtime to receive Showtime Anytime. Showtime Anytime is available through participating TV providers. “Masters of Sex”: ©Sony Pictures Television and Showtime Networks Inc. All rights reserved. “House Of Lies”, “Penny Dreadful”, “The L Word ®” & “Queer As Folk”: ©Showtime Networks Inc. All rights reserved. “Shameless”: ©Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All rights reserved. “Episodes”: ©Hat Trick Productions Ltd. All rights reserved.

closing night Bare

DIR Natalia

Leite 2014 USA 88 min

Sarah (Dianna Agron of Glee fame) is trapped in the middle of Nevada, a nowheresville of strip malls and ranch houses, where a night out means drinking at the quarry and a Super Town cashier gig is something to cling to.

Sarah’s only refuge is her absent father’s defunct vintage shop — and even that’s up for sale.

Shortly after she’s told she’s “not Super Town material,” Sarah discovers a stranger sleeping in her father’s store, and her stale routine gets turned on its head. Worldly drifter Pepper (played by charismatic Paz de la Huerta, Boardwalk Empire) has been around the block more than a few times. She opens Sarah’s eyes to life’s possibilities, while simultaneously hustling the naïve girl for a place to crash. Soon the two are roadtripping to Reno, and for the first time, Sarah revels in the anarchic pleasure of breaking all the rules. When she jokes that in ten years she’ll probably be married with three kids and breast cancer, Pepper points out, “If you don’t make your own choices in life, the world makes them for you.” Sarah chooses Pepper, but the consequences are not what she expects.

Told in flashes, like the strobe lights of the strip club where Pepper works, the film alternates images of the expansive western landscape with neon-bathed scenes of Reno, echoing Sarah’s seesaws between her old life and new. Viewers may wonder: Is Sarah being seduced by a wily user, or is she using Pepper to break free of her dead-end life? Natalia Leite, one half of the creative team behind the lesbian webseries Be Here Nowish, presents a feature film debut that makes no pretenses with easy answers, offering a compelling portrait of the complex dynamic between two searching women.

proudly sponsored by

Sunday, June 28, 7:00 pm · Castro

Film & Party: $50 members, $60 general · BARE28C Film Only: $30 members, $35 general · BARE28C

— MONICA NOLAN

party After Bare, join us in the heart of SOMA, as Oasis Nightclub & Cabaret (298 11th Street at Folsom Street), along with the fabulous Heklina, hosts our glittering Closing Night Party — honoring 39 years of Frameline Festivals. Enjoy scrumptious bites and sip signature cocktails, as we announce our Frameline39 AT&T Audience Award winners, First Feature Award, proudly supported proudly sponsored by by the Wells Fargo Foundation, and all Festival award winners and send our guests off in true SF style.

PA RT Y P A R T N E R S

E. Cee Productions PARTY EVENT PRODUCER Heklina Tito’s Handmade Vodka Guests must be 21 or over to enjoy beer, wine, or cocktails.

Small Potatoes Catering

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EW YORK CITY IN 1969 is perhaps the best-known time and place in LGBTQ civil rights history.

Though not the first backlash of its kind, the Stonewall Riots in Greenwich Village that June ignited the modern LGBTQ rights movement — and a few months later in New York City, Jeffrey Schwarz was born.

Pure coincidence? You decide: Schwarz would become one of the most prominent stewards of queer history through a panoply of documentaries on influential queer film icons of the 20th century.

frameline award

Growing up as a self-proclaimed “closeted teenager with no tangible connections to gay culture,” Schwarz found his ties to the queer world through books like Vito Russo’s The Celluloid Closet and John Waters’ Shock Value, as well as groundbreaking New Queer Cinema of the early 1990s like My Own Private Idaho and Poison, on which he was a production assistant.

With his short film Al Lewis in the Flesh, about the octogenarian star of The Munsters, the young director was already establishing his passion for documenting larger-than-life outsider personalities. But Schwarz’s first foray into documenting queer history came in 1995, as an apprentice editor on Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s pivotal documentary The Celluloid Closet.

Working on this film aligned his passion for movies and queer history, as well as immersing him in San Francisco’s documentary community. This experience would lead to documenting the life of Vito Russo, the inexhaustible activist and media critic.

Jeffrey Schwarz

Over the next 15 years, Schwarz would introduce new generations to individuals who revolutionized queer representation on screen — 1970s porn icon Jack Wrangler (Wrangler: Anatomy of an Icon), the Most Beautiful Woman in the World, Divine (I Am Divine), and activist Vito Russo, in the Emmy Award-winning film Vito. This year, Schwarz presents his latest film, Tab Hunter Confidential, about the 1950s screen heartthrob, helping to shine light on yet another icon. In addition to his extensive directing career, Schwarz is a producer of behind-the-scenes DVD content and original television programming. His work includes dozens of retrospective documentaries about films by directors such as Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, Jonathan Demme, Wes Craven, Rob Reiner, Paul Verhoeven, and the Coen brothers.

For nearly four decades, Frameline has been recognizing and celebrating pioneers in the film and LGBTQ communities, and this year we are honored to award Jeffrey Schwarz with the Frameline Award for his achievements in documenting the lives of icons who have inspired audiences here in the Bay Area and around the world. Schwarz’s films have received Frameline Completion Funding, played at numerous Frameline Festivals, often with standing ovations, and, in the case of Vito, have been viewed by thousands of students across the U.S. through our Youth in Motion program. Jeffrey Schwarz and his work will undoubtedly continue to inspire and ignite action long after he receives this year’s annual Frameline Award.

Vito

Wrangler: Anatomy of an Icon

I Am Divine

Join Frameline and acclaimed documentarians Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman as we present Jeffrey Schwarz with the 2015 Frameline Award at the June 20 screening of Tab Hunter Confidential at the Castro Theatre.

26 SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL LGBTQ FILM FESTIVAL

Tab Hunter Confidential DIR Jeffrey Schwarz 2015 USA 90 min

America was a very different place in the not-so-distant, golly-gee past of the 1950s, as vibrantly recalled in this thoroughly entertaining new documentary on formerly closeted Hollywood heartthrob and golden-boy idol Tab Hunter. His blue-eyed, blond-haired California surfer stunning looks got him cast in frequently shirtless roles that propelled his career into superstar status. He became the prototype for young idols to come; so did the studios’ desire to hide his and others’ gayness.

Following the rapturously received Vito (Frameline36) and I Am Divine (Frameline37), 2015 Frameline Award recipient Jeffrey Schwarz returns with his fascinating portrait of Divine’s two-time leading man (Lust in the Dust and Polyester). Hunter, now 83 and happily retired, gratefully recounts his seemingly charmed life story and rollercoaster career with candor, wisdom, and sincerity. Based on his 2006 autobiography, the film traces Hunter’s dizzying rise to Hollywood superstardom, his secret life in an era when being openly gay was unthinkable, and his personal triumphs once the limelight finally passed him by. Showcasing many delightful movie and TV clips and rare photos (whimsically animated), the documentary features revealing interviews with those who know and admire the actor, including his partner of 32 years and famous friends and co-stars such as John Waters, Debbie Reynolds, Robert Wagner, Portia de Rossi, and Clint Eastwood.

The film pays respect to Hunter and his classic Hollywood contemporaries (including former lover Anthony Perkins) and examines the emotional and professional consequences of the discrimination they faced. Perhaps the trailblazing success of out thespians like Zachary Quinto and Matt Bomer will mean that tomorrow’s Tab Hunters will be spared appearing in sham relationships with pretty starlets, designed to protect their wholesome, bankable images and studio box office receipts.

Saturday, June 20, 4:00 pm · Castro $8 members, $10 general · TABH20C

proudly sponsored by

— CHRIS KEECH

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frameline39

first feature award

THIS YEAR’S ELIGIBLE FIRST FEATURES •

HILE WE ALL LOVE SEEING the latest film by our favorite wellknown director, there’s nothing quite like catching debut work from an emerging voice whose first feature — whether sharply comic, emotionally gripping, visually audacious, or completely unclassifiable — brings with it the promise of a prolific career as one of our generation’s next vital storytellers.

Frameline, the San Francisco International LGBTQ Film Festival, prides itself on introducing audiences to remarkable new talent and filmmaking artists.

Groundbreaking First Feature winners include Something Must Break (Ester Martin Bergsmark), Facing Mirrors (Negar Azarbayjani), Undertow (Javier Fuentes-León), and Hedwig and the Angry Inch (John Cameron Mitchell).

The recipient of this year’s First Feature Award will be announced at the Closing Night Party on June 28. Regardless of which director takes home the award, all of the Festival’s debut feature filmmakers are winners simply for sharing their extraordinary visions and voices with us.

After Love

dir Marc Jago (p. 46) •

All About E

dir Louise Wadley (p. 46) •

Alto

dir Mikki del Monico (p. 42) •

Baby Steps

dir Barney Cheng (p. 47) •

Bare

dir Natalia Leite (p. 25) •

Floating!

dir Julia C. Kaiser (p. 47) •

Guidance

dir Pat Mills (p. 48) •

How to Win at Checkers (Every Time) dir Josh Kim (p. 35)

•

I Am Michael

dir Justin Kelly (p. 19) •

In the Grayscale

dir Claudio Marcone (p. 48) •

Naz & Maalik

dir Jay Dockendorf (p. 44) •

Portrait of a Serial Monogamist

dirs John Mitchell & Christina Zeidler (p. 50) •

Seashore

dirs Felipe Matzembacher & Marcio Reolon (p. 50) •

Stories of Our Lives dir Jim Chuchu (p. 38)

FRAMELINE38 FIRST FEATURE AWARD 2014 RECIPIENT Something Must Break, directed by Ester Martin Bergsmark

•

dir William Sullivan (p. 45) •

Proudly underwritten by the Wells Fargo Foundation, this $7,500 juried award is presented to the outstanding first narrative feature at Frameline39.

28 SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL LGBTQ FILM FESTIVAL

That’s Not Us Those People

dir Joey Kuhn (p. 39) •

Two 4 One

dir Maureen Bradley (p. 51) •

While You Weren’t Looking dir Catherine Stewart (p. 52)

spotlight

GAME CHANGERS: SEXUALITY & SPORTS

W

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HATEVER YOUR TEAM AND WHATEVER YOUR GAME, when it comes to

LGBTQ acceptance in the wide world of sports, the momentum is shifting. While the taboos of the “gay athlete” and the proverbial “sports closet”— as well as the utterly lazy and homophobic “locker room panic” defense — have existed for decades, recent events and expanded dialogue have changed the conversations around sports, sexuality, and gender identity.

From professional and collegiate athletes coming out as LGBTQ while actively playing, to straight athlete-allies being vocal advocates for equality, and from discussions around trans-inclusive policies for gender-variant players, to sports organizations affirming the existence of all their “athletic supporters” with LGBTQ Pride nights — we’re hearing a fearless new fight song ring through a global stadium of change-makers.

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Join us for six knockout programs featuring diverse representations of LGBTQ competitors from all walks of life who find affirmation being their authentic selves on and off the courts: Centerpiece documentary Out to Win; an account of the controversial Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics in To Russia With Love; poignant parallel coming-out stories in Game Face; Aussie ruggers getting down and dirty in Scrum; an exploration of mental health and redemption in Mind/Game: The Unquiet Journey of Chamique Holdsclaw; and an entertaining program of sporty shorts in Score!

Queers in Sports.

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PHOTOS: 6

1. Belle Brockhoff in To Russia With Love, page 60

3. Sydney Convicts in Scrum, page 59 5. Billie Jean King in Out to Win, page 23

2. Fallon Fox in Game Face, page 56

4. Chamique Holdsclaw in Mind/Game, page 56 6. Stella Walsh in Score! Queers in Sports, page 65

WWW.FRAMELINE.ORG 29

Serving our clients, with unique insight into the needs of the LGBTQ community for over 10 years.

Robasciotti & Associates, Inc. www.robasciotti.com • (415) 986-5500

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a portion of the proceeds of each loan we complete is given to organizations, like Frameline, who foster hope in our community Beth Hoffman owner/broker AlternativeMortgageSources.com 415.861.5708 BRE #00685309 30 SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL LGBTQ FILM FESTIVAL

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CREATING

SAFER SCHOOLS FOR LGBTQ YOUTH AND ALLIES Through Youth in Motion, we have sent thousands of films with LGBTQ inclusive curriculum guides to schools and gay-straight alliances all across the country.

LEA R N M O R E AT

frameline.org/youth-in-motion / YIMframeline @YIMFrameline

Youth in Motion is made possible through the generous support of:

Anonymous

Gerharter Photo by Rick

The 2014-2015 DVD release, Visibility Through Activism: The Legacy of Vito Russo, features the full-length documentary VITO, directed by this year’s Frameline Award recipient, Jeffrey Schwarz.

showcase

Eisenstein in Guanajuato

DIR Peter Greenaway 2015 Netherlands, Mexico, Finland, Belgium 105 min

In English and Spanish with English subtitles

Thursday, June 25, 6:30 pm · Castro $10 members, $12 general · EISE25C

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In his dazzling and giddy glitter-bomb of a film, the always inventive British-born director Peter Greenaway (The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover; The Draughtsman’s Contract) imagines what might have happened to the great Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein during a pivotal period of artistic and sexual awakening while sojourning in Mexico in 1931 to shoot a film he nearly couldn’t finish.

Using gleeful “watch me do this!” feats of camera movement, set design, and montage that rival the Soviet master himself, Greenaway stages a kind of “ten days that shook Sergei Eisenstein”: the frenetic, frizzy-haired Russian director (Finnish actor Elmer Bäck in a bravura comic performance) finds himself captivated by his studly Mexican guide Palomino Cañedo (suave Luis Alberti), who initiates the brooding Russian into unknown pleasures of the body and soul, opening him (in every way) to profound discoveries.

The bare outlines of Eisenstein’s actual time in Mexico are well known: hounded by Stalinist minders at home and snubbed by Hollywood, Eisenstein signed a contract with influential American leftists, including the journalist Upton Sinclair, to make an ethnographic film called ¡Que Viva México!, prompting him to record miles of footage exploring daily life, Day of the Dead rituals, and a sensual Latin world vastly different from the filmmaker’s Slavic miserabilism. (He insisted that repressing his sexual urges contributed to his artistic brilliance.) His American backers tried to shut the film down.

Greenaway pounces on this scenario with customary vim and virtuosity — using split screens, dizzying 360-degree tracking shots, filming from below through translucent alabaster floors — as he conjures up a quixotic genius hell-bent on conquering mortality through newfound pleasure. In this case, the pleasure is all ours.

— PETER L. STEIN

32 SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL LGBTQ FILM FESTIVAL

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Fresno

DIR Jamie Babbit 2015 USA 75 min

There’s not much going on in Fresno — the “best little city in the USA,” where the best job you can get is the worst job you’ve ever had. Upbeat “Employee of the Month” at the shabby Fresno Suites Martha (Orange Is the New Black’s Natasha Lyonne) has no complaints with the gig or with life: she has a prime parking spot, a steady paycheck, and a straightish girlfriend who sometimes answers her calls. Martha’s co-dependent, sex addict sister Shannon (Arrested Development’s Judy Greer) should be grateful for any gainful employment following her recent firing from a teaching position and subsequent failed stint in rehab, but instead she can only muster (hilarious) sardonic one-liners while working as little as humanly possible.

As Martha gets pursued by her dreamy trainer (Parks and Recreation alum Aubrey Plaza, playing a lesbian after all of our prayers), Shannon’s hump-anyone’s-leg addiction gets them both into trouble when a mullet-sporting scumbag of a hotel guest is accidentally killed. With the help of a poetic and smitten coworker, the sisters hatch a plethora of schemes to get rid of the body, resulting in blackmail, a hip-hopping bar mitzvah, and oodles of fat purple dildos.

With a powerhouse production team helmed by two previous Frameline Award recipients — director Jamie Babbit (But I’m a Cheerleader, Frameline24) and producer Andrea Sperling (Transparent) — and penned by Karey Dornetto (Portlandia), the ensemble cast is a who’s who of quirk, with cameos by Fred Armisen, Clea DuVall, and Molly Shannon.

Lyonne and Greer shine in that rarest of films — a dark comedy that allows women to be as inappropriate and flawed as men.

Friday, June 26, 6:30 pm · Castro $10 members, $12 general · FRES26C

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— ANGELIQUE SMITH

WWW.FRAMELINE.ORG 33

showcase

From This Day Forward DIR Sharon Shattuck 2015 USA 79 min

Sunday, June 21, 4:00 pm

•

Castro

$8 members, $10 general · FROM21C

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When documentary director Sharon Shattuck was still in middle school, her dad came out to her family as trans­ gender and changed names from Michael to Trisha. During the awkward throes of adolescence, having a parent who is exploring gender identity can be a difficult issue to navigate — especially in a small Midwestern town. In fact, for Sharon and her sister it was such a struggle to accept that they saw no solution aside from encouraging their parents to get a divorce. How could their straight-identified mother, Marcia, who fell in love with Michael, still be in love with Trisha? How could they possibly stay married through such a transition?

But too heartbroken at the idea of a life without each other, Trisha and Marcia never divorced, and now, several years later as Sharon prepares for her own wedding, she returns home to Michigan to better understand the impact Trisha’s transition had on the family — why her parents stayed together and how their love endured all the challenges that came along with it. The story revealed is made all the more compelling by the seemingly contrary yet entirely compatible — and adorable — couple at its center: Marcia, the traditional, even-keeled pathologist, and Trisha, the vivacious, experimental artist.

Produced by Martha Shane (After Tiller), Shattuck’s feature directorial debut is an intimate family portrait that layers home video and gracefully shot footage of northern Michigan landscapes with Trisha’s own stunning paintings, which offer vibrant insight into the highs and lows of her personal journey. In the end, the only real question is: what is everyone wearing to Sharon’s wedding?

— JOANNE PARSONT

This film is a recipient of a Frameline Completion Fund grant.

34 SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL LGBTQ FILM FESTIVAL

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How to Win at Checkers (Every Time) DIR Josh Kim 2015 Thailand, USA, Indonesia 80 min

| In Thai with English subtitles

Each year in Thailand, all 21-year-old males must appear for the draft lottery at their local Buddhist temple — where drawing red means military service and drawing black means being excused. As his own draft day approaches, Oat looks back on the time he did all in his power to keep his beloved older brother Ek close to home and out of the service. Hoping that love and luck will be enough, the 11-year-old Oat unwittingly sets in motion events that lay bare the limited options facing Thailand’s working poor.

Since losing both parents, the brothers have lived with their aunt and young cousin. Between Ek’s bartending and Auntie’s house cleaning, the family scrapes by in a village practically owned by black-marketeers. Still, they have each other and want to keep it that way. Like many other things in their lives, the lottery results are meant to be accepted as the luck of the draw. But as Ek, his wealthy boyfriend Jai, and their trans friend Kitty face the draft in their own ways, their differences grow increasingly apparent and threaten simpler bonds of love and friendship. An innocent primarily concerned with food and playing checkers, Oat sees the struggles facing those he looks up to and suddenly comes to know the very real problems of adults. Feeling the pressure of change, Oat tries to problem-solve on his own, with often disastrous results.

Set in the economic fringes of Bangkok and inspired by the short story collection Sightseeing

by Rattawut Lapcharoensap, Korean American writer-director Josh Kim’s impressive and seamless debut captures a tender bond of brotherly love and the simultaneous whimsical innocence and devastating disillusionment of an adolescent striving to understand a world that is deeply unjust despite all of its beauty.

Saturday, June 20, 7:00 pm · Castro $10 members, $12 general · HOWT20C

— CAROL HARADA

This film is a recipient of a Frameline Completion Fund grant.

WWW.FRAMELINE.ORG 35

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photo courtesy of HBO/Ellen Shub

Larry Kramer in Love and Anger DIR Jean Carlomusto 2015 USA 82 min

Saturday, June 27, 3:30 pm · Castro $8 members, $10 general · LARR27C

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A gripping, warts-and-all tribute to one of the most important gay activists of our time, Larry Kramer in Love and Anger is not just a hero’s tale. Filmmaker Jean Carlomusto (Sex in an Epidemic, Frameline34), also crafts a compelling account of the onset and terrible escalation of the AIDS crisis in the United States, an epidemic that came to define Kramer’s life and work.

As a cofounder of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis and then ACT UP, and the writer of the play The Normal Heart, Kramer was a tireless, powerful force at a horrific time. He gave voice to a community’s rage and compelled government action on HIV/AIDS. (Indeed, even Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases through the 1980s and 1990s and someone with whom Kramer frequently and viciously sparred, today speaks of Kramer with respect and fondness.) But as much as he is lauded for his achievements, many of Kramer’s contemporaries derided him for, among other things, his condemnation of sexual freedom — as spelled out in his 1978 novel, Faggots. Director and close friend Carlomusto does not shy away from addressing all facets of this acclaimed and often controversial figure.

Larry Kramer in Love and Anger tells the story of Kramer’s childhood, takes us through his years as a young man in London and Los Angeles, and makes excellent use of archival video footage from his time on the world stage. Then it brings us to today, as a frail but still fiery Kramer fights serious health complications stemming from his long personal fight against HIV — and finally marries his longtime partner, David Webster. This is a vibrant portrait of a complex and brilliant man.

— CHARLES PURDY

36 SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL LGBTQ FILM FESTIVAL

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Liz in September | Liz en Septiembre DIR Fina Torres 2015 Venezuela 92 min

| In Spanish with English subtitles

Last Summer at Bluefish Cove, a sexy, groundbreaking lesbian play from the early 1980s, gets a fresh update from Venezuelan director Fina Torres. Bluefish Cove is now a Caribbean beach, where a tight-knit group of lesbian friends, lovers, and cordial exes meet every year to relax and let their guard down, without having to hide who they are. For Liz, the group’s heartbreaker, the summer has a special significance, and she is determined to live it to the fullest — diving, drinking, and dancing to her heart’s content. Too bad she’s the only single one of the group. Then, a stranger crashes the cohort’s cozy world. Eva is a troubled married woman who joins the intimate gathering courtesy of a car breakdown. When one of the gang bets the competitive Liz a bottle of champagne that she can’t get Eva into bed in three days, the game is on.

However, there’s more to both women than the labels they wear, and the plot thickens as confidences are shared and secret after secret — not to mention a little skin — is revealed. Viewers will drool over both the gorgeous tropical setting and the bevy of bathing beauties who decorate the beach.

Patricia Velasquez (familiar from her work on Showtime’s The L-Word) is a standout as Liz, the hard-headed, motorcycle-riding seductress who secretly wonders what her legacy will be, and her cast of loving friends feels just like your own. Director Fina Torres (Celestial Clockwork; Woman on Top) artfully balances eye candy with poignancy, evoking rather than explaining the forces pushing an unlikely pair together.

Friday, June 19, 7:00 pm · Castro $10 members, $12 general · LIZI19C

Monday, June 22, 9:00 pm · Piedmont $10 members, $12 general · LIZI22P

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— MONICA NOLAN

WWW.FRAMELINE.ORG 37

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Stories of Our Lives DIR Jim Chuchu 2014 Kenya 61 min

Monday, June 22, 7:00 pm · Piedmont $10 members, $12 general · STOR22P

Saturday, June 27, 1:30 pm · Castro $8 members, $10 general · STOR27C

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| In Swahili and English with English subtitles

Homophobia is not just strong in Kenya but institutionalized, which exponentially raises the stakes of The NEST Collective’s daring and sublime anthology of short films. The Nairobi-based multidisciplinary arts collective — a confederation of ten artists who have claimed the transformational mission to challenge and dissolve myths and norms of Kenyan identity — went around the country compiling the experiences of LGBTQI people as a first step toward breaking the silence enforced on queer people. Artfully adapting those 200 interviews into a mosaic of five dramatic vignettes, the filmmakers forge powerfully intimate depictions of identity under siege that poignantly call out ignorance and intolerance.

The curtain-raiser of this elegant black-and-white collection, Ask Me Nicely, neatly etches a lesbian highschool relationship under both abnormal and normal pressures. Run depicts the perennial danger in Kenya of being perceived as gay and pushes the main character to decide whether or not he’ll keep running. Longtime friends in Athman grapple with the awkward tensions that arise when one guy declares his unrequited feelings. Duet, which portrays an interracial encounter in a UK hotel room, is the only story set outside Kenya’s borders. The overtly political and polemical piece, Each Night I Dream, centers on a lesbian couple who opt to finesse their cohabitation by passing as sisters.

Quietly inspiring and resolutely life affirming, Stories of Our Lives nonetheless does not elide or evade harsh realities. Consider that the country’s Film Classification Board restricted the exhibition of the film for “promoting homosexuality, which is contrary to our national norms and values.” That’s the environment this invaluable work exposes and challenges. Amid the universal truths that will strike a chord with viewers, the uniqueness of Kenya’s fraught situation is ever-present.

— MICHAEL FOX

38 SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL LGBTQ FILM FESTIVAL

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Those People DIR Joey Kuhn 2015 USA 95 min

Obsession, scandal, and shifting loyalties put pressure on a lifelong friendship and a new relationship in Joey Kuhn’s erotic, arresting directorial debut. Budding artist Charlie (Jonathan Gordon, God’s Pocket) is so hung up on handsome, vain BFF Sebastian (Jason Ralph, A Most Violent Year) that when asked to paint a self-portrait, he can only deliver yet another painting of his friend. In the wake of a scandal that envelops Sebastian after his Bernie Madoff-like father goes to jail, Charlie moves into Sebastian’s luxurious Manhattan apartment, the perfect setup for getting closer to the object of his affection. But Sebastian is like a mirage, always just out of reach; so when Charlie meets Tim (Haaz Sleiman, The Visitor, Nurse Jackie) — a Lebanese concert pianist, older and settled in contrast to Sebastian’s chaos — Charlie is intrigued as well as attracted. Sebastian’s ensuing jealousy presents Charlie with a life-altering question: Should he maintain the status quo in the hopes that his feelings will someday be reciprocated, or should he pursue something real with his hot new man?

It’s evident in the names Charlie and Sebastian, borrowed from Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, that Kuhn is exploring more than romantic drama. Those People closely observes the social milieu in which the story is set, Charlie and Sebastian’s tight group of friends, and the changing nature of a friendship once a third party appears on the scene. Its privileged characters evoke Whit Stillman’s films (and in Sebastian’s familial predicament, Bonfire of the Vanities), but Kuhn is a more tactile, visceral director. Those People’s great strengths are in its committed performances, the sultry chemistry between the three leads, and the passion at the heart of a decidedly uneven romantic triangle.

Friday, June 19, 9:30 pm · Castro $10 members, $12 general · THOS19C

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— PAM GRADY

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special presentations Magic Mike XXL

SPECIAL PREVIEW SCREENING

DIR Gregory Jacobs 2015 USA 111 min

The original Magic Mike (2012) built a cult following among gay men — and the women who love them, happy to spend a raucous couple of hours admiring real-life former male stripper Channing Tatum and real-life gay icon Matt Bomer.

Embracing the gleeful queer gaze at the film, savvy studio Warner Bros. even released an especially gay-friendly trailer and brought Magic Mike floats to pride parades. Now, with Magic Mike XXL’s special preview screening in the Castro Theatre at Frameline39, the cult following promises to become an open love affair.

Magic Mike XXL picks up three years after Mike (Channing Tatum) bowed out of the stripper life and finds the remaining Kings of Tampa (Matt Bomer, Joe Manganiello, Kevin Nash, Adam Rodriguez, and Gabriel Iglesias) likewise ready to throw in the towel. But they want to do it their own way: burning down the house at one last blowout performance in Myrtle Beach, with legendary headliner Magic Mike returning to share the spotlight. On the road to their final show, the guys shake off the past — not to mention everything else — in surprising ways.

Directed by Emmy Award winner Gregory Jacobs (Behind the Candelabra) and executive produced by longtime collaborator and the first film’s director Steven Soderbergh, Magic Mike XXL will heap your plate with the extra, extra ample helpings of muscle and moves you’ve been waiting for.

Saturday, June 27, 8:30 pm · Castro

Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

$10 members, $12 general · MAGI27C

Written by Reid Carolin and produced by Nick Wechsler, Gregory Jacobs, Channing Tatum, and Reid Carolin, the film also stars Amber Heard, Donald Glover, Andie MacDowell, Elizabeth Banks, and Jada Pinkett Smith.

Magic Mike XXL is set for release on July 1st, 2015.

Querelle

RETROSPECTIVE

DIR Rainer Werner Fassbinder 1982 West Germany, France 108 min

In English and French with English subtitles

New German Cinema wunderkind Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1982 swan- Wednesday, June 24, 1:00 pm · Castro song, a fever-dream adaptation of Jean Genet’s classic 1947 novel of exis- $8 members, $10 general · QUER24C tential homoeroticism, stars hairy-chested Brad Davis (Midnight Express) as the titular sailor caught up in dangerous games of sadomasochistic seduction proudly sponsored in a French port town teeming with lustful lads and phallic architecture. by Notorious thief, murderer, and prick-tease Querelle arrives in Brest and visits the local bar-cum-brothel overseen by Lysaine (French New Wave doyenne Jeanne Moreau), who is shacking up with both her husband, Nono (the smoldering Günther Kaufmann), and her lover Robert, who happens to be the sailor’s brother — such is this pulse-quickening melodrama’s propensity for incestuous coincidence. Dogged by corrupt police chief Mario, hot-and-bothered construction worker Gil (a dead ringer for bro Robert), and smitten shipmate Lieutenant Seblon (Euro film icon Franco Nero), our antihero succumbs to temptation and discovers the orgasmic thrills and back-alley betrayals of la petite mort.

More than thirty years after its initial release, Querelle remains a singularly sensual work and is now clearly recognized as a hugely influential precursor to the New Queer Cinema movement. Wondrously imaginative in its nonlinear storytelling and spectacular production design, this visionary film — whether seen for the first or tenth time—dazzles as an opium-addled ode to sex, death, and bell-bottoms.

— STEVEN JENKINS

This retrospective screening of Querelle is being shown in conjunction with the new documentary Fassbinder: To Love Without Demands (see page 55), in commemoration of the 70th anniversary of Fassbinder’s birth.

WWW.FRAMELINE.ORG

41

54: The Director’s Cut

Alto

DIR Mark Christopher 2015 USA 106 min

DIR Mikki del Monico 2015 USA 97 min

In director Mark Christopher’s glittering re-creation of an era, a naïve New Jersey boy becomes the belle of New York’s 1970s disco demimonde at the storied Studio 54.

Originally released in 1998, the film was bowdlerized to make it more palatable for mainstream audiences; this revelatory director’s cut, which includes 36 minutes of never-seen material rescued from dailies, restores Christopher’s original vision, in which the hedonism of the club — the coke, the Quaaludes, the sex in all its glorious varieties — is like catnip to 18-year-old Shane (Ryan Phillippe). Burning with ambition as well as desire for both men and women, and one of many objects of lust for 54 co-owner Steve Rubell (a brilliant Mike Myers), the club’s newest waiter uses his sexuality to create his own brand of celebrity. Only his Studio 54 family, coat-check girl Anita (Salma Hayek) and her waiter husband Greg (Breckin Meyer), keep Shane tethered to reality, though theirs is a fraught erotic triangle. Even as Shane gains entry to a glamorous world as a boy-toy for moneyed club-goers, 54 paints a scathing portrait of casual cruelty in a class-driven society where Shane may venture only so far beyond the velvet rope. The allure of Studio 54 for Shane (and the audience) is irresistible, as Christopher fills the screen with exuberance and a soundtrack full of disco classics.

The mirror ball in this melodrama is a beacon to a lost world of dazzling decadence where it seemed like the music would never stop.

Rising singer-songwriter Francesca “Frankie” Del Vecchio (Diana DeGarmo) is engaged to her promising musical career and to frozen-food entrepreneur Tony, happily devoted in equal measure to traditional Italian-American culture, her famiglia, and Mom’s lasagna. Frankie’s bella vita is perfectly peaceful — until a dead body shows up in the trunk of her rental car.

Obsessed with the exploitative (and hugely popular) TV show Mob Hit, Frankie’s sister Heather convinces Frankie to attend the mafioso’s wake, setting off a string of fateful introductions to the real mobsters in their midst. The entrancingly seductive Nicolette, the daughter of newly minted mob don Caesar, takes a particular interest in Frankie and her music, paving the way to commercial success and an unexpected love interest. Which path will Frankie choose? And what’s up with the feds suddenly tracking her every move? What family secrets will be revealed along the way? Has everyone gone oobatz? This buoyant and boisterous debut feature from director Mikki del Monico — produced by and featuring Annabella Sciorra (The Hand That Rocks the Cradle), filmed in New York City by award-winning cinematographer Valentina Caniglia, scored with original music from Antigone Rising and Ace Young, and showcasing a star-making performance from American Idol runner up Diana DeGarmo — will rock its way into your heart. Badabing!

Friday, June 26, 9:00 pm · Castro

Tuesday, June 23, 9:30 pm · Roxie

— LEAH LOSCHIAVO

— PAM GRADY

$10 members, $12 general · 54TH26C sponsored by

42 SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL LGBTQ FILM FESTIVAL

$10 members, $12 general · ALTO23R

us features

Beautiful Something

Dyke Central Episodes 6-10

Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party

DIR Joseph Graham 2014 USA 91 min

DIR Florencia Manovil 2015 USA 105 min

DIR Stephen Cone 2015 USA 87 min

In one desperate night, four disparate gay men cruise Philadelphia in pursuit of ever-elusive human connection. Brian (Brian Sheppard), a poet with an already-spent advance and a looming deadline, seeks distraction at dusk — whether that means a hook-up (or two) or confessing his love to his straight best friend.

Drew (Colman Domingo, Selma, The Big Gay Sketch Show), a renowned sculptor in love with his boyish muse, is eager to finish his latest creation. His model Jim (Zack Ryan) is an unpredictable aspiring actor prone to dramatic outbursts. Simultaneously aroused and intimidated by Drew’s talent and devotion, Jim yearns for a modicum of freedom from the sculptor’s attentions.

Rounding out the quartet is Bob (John Lescault), a wealthy, alcoholic talent agent, cruising the Philadelphia backstreets for the titular “beautiful something.”

Despite his aimlessness, he usually finds his target.

With the gritty-yet-enchanting byways of Philadelphia as backdrop, the city itself becomes a significant supporting character. Beautiful Something follows these four men on their interlocking searches for sex, art, love, and identity within the City of Brotherly Love.

Directing his smoldering cast with conviction in a moody, nighttime palette, San Francisco-based Joseph Graham gives us a film with a lot of male skin, but also a lot of heart, as it explores centuries-old questions about mixing up love with art.

Your favorite Oakland webseries, Dyke Central, is back with everything you’ve missed since the pilot’s debut at Frameline36: the escapades of resident butch lothario, Gin, who vows to never see a woman more than two nights in a row; touching heart-to-heart conversations between buddies, made sweeter with chocolate edibles; and, of course, the untenable love triangle between Alex, a charming masculine-of-center hottie with a smile that’ll make you blush, Fabiana, Alex’s mysterious roommate, and Alex’s girlfriend, Jackie, who uses every tool (and person) at her disposal to get what she wants.

Just like you and your friends, this group of queers has plenty of fresh drama. Dynamic local filmmaker Florencia Manovil rounds out season one with refreshingly authentic sex scenes, honest conversations and major confrontations. From new tensions surfacing in old friendships, to a health scare that threatens to divide the group, to a scene at the local dungeon that will make you gasp and bite your lower lip, Dyke Central gives you everything you want — and everything you didn’t even realize you craved until you watched this show.

This tender and charming new feature from Stephen Cone (The Wise Kids, Frameline36) unfolds over a 24-hour period in the life of Henry Gamble, on the occasion of his 17th birthday. Henry is the likable son of a newly ordained pastor at a large evangelical church, and the lives of his family and friends are deeply embedded within a squeaky clean devotional world of faith.

At Henry’s party, the Gambles’ well-appointed home welcomes a friendly gaggle of hormonal teenagers from both church and Henry’s non-denominational high school, as well as earnest young adult church counselors and congregational elders — all striving to define on their own terms an acceptable balance between reverence and frolicking. The restrained passions of this gathering unravel over the afternoon, as lithe, entangling young limbs stir the waters of the backyard pool and an advantageous box of wine loosens the spirits of the flock. The caprice of sexual explorations, metaphysical frustrations, and decidedly earthly fervors bubble up through fissures of the soul, as whispered secrets grow louder and undercurrents of pristinely constructed lives come to the surface. Director Cone’s eloquent framing and non-judgmental tone create an intimate, empathetic glimpse into the lives of pious people struggling against temporal temptations. Set to a soaring synth-pop soundtrack that spans the decades and featuring naturalistic performances from a winning cast of fresh faces, Henry Gamble’s 17th proves to be one unforgettable birthday party.

— WILL GARDNER

— TAYLOR HODGES PRECEDED BY:

Put the Needle on the Record dir

Shine Louise Houston 2014 USA 10 min

Remember that high school babe that everyone wanted to get down with, but no one dared try? For these friends that was Samantha, and as they light up and spin vinyl in this erotic short, one of them claims to remember her a bit better than the others.

— LEAH LOSCHIAVO

Saturday, June 20, 4:00 pm · Victoria $8 members, $10 general · DYKE20V

Monday, June 22, 9:30 pm · Castro

Wednesday, June 24, 9:30 pm · Piedmont

Friday, June 19, 4:00 pm · Castro

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$10 members, $12 general · BEAU22C

$10 members, $12 general · DYKE24P

$8 members, $10 general · HENR19C

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us features

Jason and Shirley

Naz & Maalik

S&M Sally

DIR Stephen Winter 2015 USA 89 min

DIR Jay Dockendorf 2015 USA 85 min

DIR Michelle Ehlen 2015 USA 80 min

What Interior. Leather Bar. (Frameline37) did for Cruising (or, perhaps more accurately, what Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange’s version of Grey Gardens did for the original documentary by the Maysles brothers), Jason and Shirley does for Oscar-winner Shirley Clarke’s seminal, controversial Portrait of Jason. Director Stephen Winter (Chocolate Babies, Frameline21) presents a fictitious account of the making of Portrait of Jason, a groundbreaking example of confessional biography, famously shot in one grueling 12-hour session in Clarke’s apartment in Manhattan’s Chelsea Hotel. For his reimagined scenario, Winter, brilliantly borrowing the look and feel of 1960s cinéma vérité, depicts the behind-the-scenes power struggle between the white Jewish director and her eccentric gay African American star, Jason Holliday, a pill-popping, boozy hustler with dreams of becoming a cabaret superstar (just one of the many similarities Jason has to Little Edie).

Upon Portrait of Jason’s release in 1967, critics were divided between condemning it as exploitation and hailing it as a masterpiece; famed director Ingmar Bergman called it “the most extraordinary film I’ve ever seen in my life.” Did Shirley bait Jason into unraveling on camera, or was this Jason’s plan all along? And just what was the nature of Jason’s relationship with Shirley’s husband, the devastatingly handsome actor Carl Lee? Mixing fantasy and reality with enthralling performances from Jack Waters and Sarah Schulman in the title roles, Jason and Shirley is a fascinating exploration of art, race, privilege, sex, and — most provocatively — the fine art of manipulation.

Set in sun-dappled Brooklyn, Naz & Maalik is, on the surface, a charming story of a couple of Black Muslim teenagers just hanging out, but it skillfully weaves weighty themes into its nonchalant narrative of two young men trying to maintain carefully constructed blinds around their sexuality. On a peaceful Friday afternoon, gregarious Maalik and unassuming Naz hustle street corners in their neighborhood selling lotto tickets and perfume — and reveling in the afterglow of a night spent together. What they don’t know is at the same time they’re being followed by Agent Sarah Mickell of the FBI, who is keeping an eye on the teens based on a tip from an informant. Naz and Maalik may be hiding something, but it’s not what the agent suspects.

As their secrets threaten to surface, the two must decide whether or not they are going to open up about their relationship to their friends and family. Inspired by interviews with Muslims in New York, director Jay Dockendorf takes aim at gentrification and post-9/11 surveillance of Muslims, highlighting the disconnect between gratuitous notions and actual lived experience. Endearing and full of heart, the two leads (Curtiss Cook Jr. and Kerwin Johnson Jr.) hold the center of this deceptively breezy story, and impressive camerawork pulls viewers right into the action. The result is quietly affecting and shows a slice of life rarely seen onscreen.

Move over Fifty Shades of Grey — Michelle Ehlen returns to Frameline with the third installment of “the trilogy,” and she’s going where no vanilla lesbian romcom has gone before: the dungeon! When lesbian couple Jamie and Jill move in together, their lives quickly become all about cuddling and watching TV. But when Jill casually mentions that she used to frequent kink clubs, butch Jamie suddenly feels like their sex might be too tame for Jill’s tastes. At first reluctant but eventually very determined, Jamie enters a world where floggers and safe words quickly replace the couple’s humdrum routine. As Jamie relishes being a newbie to the scene and adopts the pseudonym Thighmaster Sally, the infinitely patient and more experienced Jill grows weary with the constant kinky posturing. When fantasies come to life outside the dungeon, the couple’s altered power dynamic might signal a breaking point. Will Jamie submit to the pain of admitting what she really likes? Mean­ while, Jamie’s ex-girlfriend Lola is dating polyamorous Sebastian and, in order to control the situation, encourages him to go out with Jamie’s gay male roommate.

As the two find themselves one-upping each other to win Sebastian’s affection, they go too far in what can only be described as a game-of-chicken threesome.

S&M Sally — featuring characters from writerdirector-star Michelle Ehlen’s Butch Jamie (Frameline32) and Heterosexual Jill (Frameline37)—takes what might be taboo subjects for some and gives them authentic representation while maintaining just the right amount of awkwardness, charm, and hilarity.

— MORDECAI STAYTON

— ANGELIQUE SMITH

— JOE BOWMAN

Friday, June 19, 7:00 pm · Victoria

Sunday, June 21, 6:30 pm · Roxie

Tuesday, June 23, 9:30 pm · Victoria

Monday, June 22, 4:15 pm · Castro

Friday, June 26, 9:30 pm · Victoria

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Stuff

The Surface

That’s Not Us

DIR Suzanne Guacci 2015 USA 98 min

DIR Michael J. Saul 2014 USA 78 min

DIR William Sullivan 2015 USA 98 min

“If you don’t take care of your stuff, things start to fall apart.” So says Trisha, half of a couple struggling to find themselves and each other in Stuff. After 14 years together, Deb and Trisha are miles apart — emotionally and in their king-size bed. Deb keeps herself occupied caring for their two little girls, Suzie and Sam. Her life is packing lunches and meeting school buses. Meanwhile, when she’s not busy at her dental practice, Trisha is tending her father’s grave and attempting to mother her own widowed mom.

Into this muddle of familial obligations, resentments, and unfinished business comes hot single mom and tattoo artist Jamie (Traci Dinwiddle of Elena Undone, Frameline34). After their kids have a run-in at school, Jamie makes an effort to connect, mom to mom, with Deb. Though she’s initially put off by Jamie’s unconventional style, Deb craves adult company, and an unmistakable intensity develops slowly between them — meanwhile, Trisha, still mired in grief and seeking closure, throws herself into completing the projects her father left unfinished. Both women find distraction and fleeting fulfillment outside of their relationship, so what will it take for them to face the status of their marriage and life together?

Stuff is an honestly emotional, down-to-earth film about how easy it is to take our loved ones for granted — and how important it is to take care of our “stuff.”

An aimless young man happens upon a yard sale, where he’s drawn to a vintage 8mm camera. His impromptu purchase awakens unexpected impulses, both artistic and personal, which adjust his life’s course and set him on unfamiliar paths toward illuminating destinations.

Evan — played with great delicacy by lithe newcomer Harry Hains — is a waiflike, orphaned 22-yearold who grew up in the foster care system and is still feeling unmoored as he enters adulthood in Los Angeles.

He is uninspired by his college classes, growing frustrated with his increasingly critical boyfriend, and eager to find something meaningful and fulfilling to connect to in his life. The 8mm camera quickly becomes the creative outlet he’d sought, and he dives headlong into his new hobby. Evan returns to the home of the elderly man who sold him the camera, in search of additional filmmaking equipment, and he ends up leaving with a stash of the family’s old home movies.

The quietly poignant films feed Evan’s creativity, providing a (projected) family he never had and sparking not only an intimacy with the family’s past but also a surprising connection to its present.

As the film charts Evan’s emergence from indecisive ennui, director Michael J. Saul intersperses beautifully filmed water imagery with throwback 8mm home movie footage, making The Surface a visually rich homage to filmmaking, as well as an intimate account of a young man’s personal journey.

Whiskey-fueled card games, buzz-killing wisecracks, and overdue emotional conversations are just part of what three New York couples pack into one end-of-theseason beach house vacation. From the refreshingly natural, accessible ensemble cast to the consciously relaxed filmmaking style, everything about That’s Not Us invites the viewer to join the romantic ebb and flow of these young, thoughtful friends. Al adores her longtime partner Jackie, but it’s tough for them to talk about the sexual dry spell they’re suffering. Meanwhile, Liz and Dougie can’t keep their hands off each other, though their competitive natures sometimes get in the way of romantic harmony. And James and Spencer recently moved in together, but Spencer’s acceptance to grad school threatens to put both physical and emotional distance between them.

Director William Sullivan and DP Derek Dodge gave their cast a brief outline and let the scenes unfold organically, with the actors improvising much of their dialogue. The result is an honest take on contemporary relationships, packed with genuine interactions and nuanced performances. The film finds the quiet moments when otherwise happily paired people feel alone despite being within arm’s reach of their partners, and it revels in the rare moments when communication triumphs over silence. The filmmakers set out to make a romantic comedy about “the marathon of romance,” and they’ve achieved that goal in spades, highlighting the often awkward, funny, and messy work it takes to make love last.

— LAURA HENNEMAN

— MICHAEL J. LOPRESTI

PRECEDED BY:

Moonlight dir

— LAURA HENNEMAN

Janella Lacson 2014 USA 12 min

A woman under house arrest gets an unexpected visitor.

Friday, June 19, 9:30 pm · Victoria

Saturday, June 27, 6:00 pm · Castro

Sunday, June 21, 6:30 pm · Castro

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After Love Die blauen Stunden

All About E

DIR Marc Jago 2015 Austria 72 min

To all appearances E (the stunning Mandahla Rose) leads a glamorous life as the sexy star DJ at one of the hottest clubs in Sydney, a job with perks that include her pick of the beautiful women who come to dance to her tunes. But the reality is this daughter of Lebanese immigrant parents is so closeted that she broke up with the love of her life, Trish (Julia Billington); entered into a sham marriage with fey gay best mate Matt (Brett Rogers); and even abandoned her once promising musical career as a flutist. When she and Matt find a duffel bag full of cash, the money seems like the ticket to a better life, but the pair are soon on the run — and on a road trip into the outback that may lead E back to the one who got away.

Writer-director Louise Wadley has fashioned a sexy Aussie crime caper that hums with suspense, flashes of humor, and second chances. E was left hollow by her decision to turn her back on her music and what might have been with Trish, all because she was afraid of being honest with her parents. On the road, she is ostensibly running from danger, but the situation forces her to confront what life in the closet has cost her. It also gives her the opportunity to make things right — that is, it will if she survives.

DIR Louise Wadley 2014 Australia 93 min

In German with English subtitles

Somewhere amid the darkened underground discotheques and cruisy public bathrooms, a doomed love triangle forms between three lost souls in this stylish noir. Ben is a high-fashion photographer with an existential curiosity that places him amid the fringes of society. He finds himself drawn to Jean, an emotionally distant rentboy, who spends his nights cruising the public toilets for johns. Dangerous complications arise when Jean develops an obsessive attraction to a seductive trans call-girl named June.

To make matters even more tangled, June has a past score to settle with Ben and uses Jean as bait to set the trap. With striking cinematography in high contrast black-and-white and an eerie, haunting electronic score — a style calling to mind David Lynch’s Eraserhead by way of Fassbinder and the French New Wave — director Marc Jago creates a moody and dreamlike world for his characters to inhabit, in this unforgettable and impressive feature film debut.

— JOE BOWMAN

PRECEDED BY:

(Orpheus) The Poetics of Finitude dir

— PAM GRADY

Rudy Lemcke 2014 USA 7 min

This deconstruction of the myth of Orpheus uses live action (from Cocteau’s Orphée), animation, sound, and text to create a visual poem.

Monday, June 22, 7:00 pm · Castro $10 members, $12 general · ALLA22C

Wednesday, June 24, 9:30 pm · Roxie $10 members, $12 general · AFTE24R

Wednesday, June 24, 7:00 pm · Piedmont $10 members, $12 general · ALLA24P sponsored by

46 SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL LGBTQ FILM FESTIVAL

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Baby Steps

Carmín Tropical

DIR Barney Cheng 2014 Taiwan, USA 103 min

DIR Rigoberto Pérezcano 2014 Mexico 80 min

“If you weren’t gay, this wouldn’t be so complicated!” proclaims Danny’s Taiwanese mother to her son’s face as he and his American partner Tate contemplate having a child through surrogacy. As if the complex world of international surrogacy weren’t enough! Add to the mix entrenched cultural attitudes about homosexuality, traditional views of family roles and societal expectations, and a well-intentioned but extremely meddlesome (albeit loving) mother who wants to control every aspect of the process — and you have Baby Steps, a cross-cultural comedy that thematically picks up where Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet left off.

Helmed by Taiwanese-American actor Barney Cheng (who also stars as Danny) in his feature directorial debut, working with legendary Taiwanese producer Li-Kong Hsu (who also produced The Wedding Banquet), Baby Steps explores with grace, humor, empathy, and charm such in-the-news topics as gay parenting, adoption, and the risks of international surrogacy. Boasting an excellent central performance by veteran Taiwanese actress Grace Guei (Eat Drink Man Woman) as Danny’s mother, vivid locations from Los Angeles to Taipei City, and a few of the surprises that inevitably arise when you’re expecting, Baby Steps is not only a joyous and hopeful paean to the possibility of reconciliation between the traditional and the nontraditional, but also an entertaining and thoughtful rumination on the responsibilities of parenting (whatever one’s sexual orientation may be).

This mesmerizing mystery delves deep into the heart, mind, and soul of Mabel, a Mexican muxe (transwoman) who revives past demons when she comes face to face with the people, places, and memories of a faraway life. After learning that her dear friend Daniela has suddenly died, Mabel travels back to her hometown of Juchitán only to discover that everything is both the same and different at once. As she cautiously navigates her old haunting grounds, we learn more about the life she left behind and the senseless violence that reigns in all areas of her former home. She soon finds herself immersed in a tale of crime and passion that reveals shocking moments of emotional turmoil and unadulterated truth. From the opening frame, filmmaker Rigoberto Pérezcano creates a vivid and decidedly human vision of a wicked world in which it’s hard to know whom to trust and what will happen next.

The film’s spellbinding tone and urgent energy generate a tense, complex noir atmosphere as a variety of distinctive characters deal with questions about tolerance and the value of identity. Part psychological thriller, part personal love story, Carmín Tropical is a layered exploration of gender and culture in a familiar world turned upside down.

In English and Mandarin with English subtitles

In Spanish with English subtitles

— BRENDAN PETERSON

In German with English subtitles

Jana and Katha are bound to each other, ready to make the leap into matrimony, and committed to having a child together (with the aid of a sperm donor).

Traditional preparation for this huge life transition involves, of course, bachelorette parties, and their closest friends don’t disappoint. Katha is lovingly kidnapped on her doorstep by her best friend Charlie, her brother Tobi, and her co-worker Ken, who sweep her away for two days on a fairly primitive houseboat, drinking and trading stories as they leisurely float on the water. Unanticipated and somewhat unsettling for Katha, the relative stranger Momo — the prospective willing-to-be-known sperm donor for her and Jana’s future child — is also among the entourage. Complicating matters further is Katha’s lingering attraction to Ken, a lure that becomes more enticing as the booze takes hold. Meanwhile, back at their apartment, Jana’s friends are keeping her well pickled in drink before launching her obsessive ex-girlfriend into their party. The respective temptations of their parallel situations may prove just precarious enough to derail Jana and Katha’s imminent nuptials. Director Julia Kaiser volleys impressively between her twin narratives, channeling authentic humor, warmth, and pathos through unaffected (and largely improvised) performances, intimate handheld camerawork, and a palpably affectionate rapport with this passionate, relatable couple vulnerably suspended above the biggest decision of their lives.

— LEAH LOSCHIAVO

Sunday, June 21, 6:30 pm · Victoria

Friday, June 19, 9:30 pm · Roxie

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DIR Julia C. Kaiser 2014 Germany 86 min

This film contains depictions and discussion of transphobic violence.

— TIM SIKA

Floating!

Das Floß!

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Sunday, June 21, 9:00 pm · Roxie $10 members, $12 general · FLOA21R

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Guidance DIR Pat Mills 2015 Canada 80 min

Everyone needs a bit of a pep talk sometimes: “You are not gay, you just have a gentle voice” or “You will beat this skin cancer with cigarettes and tanning.” Quirky Canadian former child star David Gold is in dire need of his own positive affirmations. His bills are overdue, his career recording motivational tapes is deteriorating, his stage III skin cancer is getting in the way of his drinking, and everyone keeps insisting that he’s gay.

Undaunted by this state of affairs, David channels his inner Stuart Smalley and prepares for the role of his career: pretending to be a qualified high school guidance counselor named Roland Brown. Fake resume, check. Corduroy jacket, check. “Smart” glasses, check.

Fifth of vodka, check. If he was good enough for a hit show, gosh darnit, he’s good enough to work with high schoolers. As students bring their troubles to his office, “Roland’s” unorthodox methods and utter lunacy raise the ire of the school’s teachers and the adoration of the students. Is he brilliant or insane? Who can tell and who cares? But then David’s unraveling web of deceit leads him down an unexpected, yet refreshing, path of self-realization.

Writer-director-star Pat Mills — whose shorts, Babysitting Andy and Pat’s First Kiss, screened at Frameline32 and who really is an alum of Nickelodeon’s You Can’t Do That on Television — manages to make David both deranged and endearing in his hilariously entertaining and irreverent feature film debut.

— ANGELIQUE SMITH

Hidden Away A Escondidas

In the Grayscale En la Gama de los Grises

DIR Mikel Rueda 2014 Spain 96 min

DIR Claudio Marcone 2015 Chile 101 min

A cross-cultural friendship turns into something much more profound in Spanish director Mikel Rueda’s subtle and compassionate new film. When the two protagonists cross paths in the gritty backstreets of Bilbao, Spanish teen Rafa is drifting away from his friends and their obsessions with girls and soccer, and handsome Moroccan immigrant Ibra (short for Ibrahim) lives in a community center for undocumented minors, “hidden away” from society at large. Director Rueda uses the notion of hiding in other ways as well: Rafa and Ibra sublimate their burgeoning attraction and homoerotic interest into wrestling, water polo, and food fights, and the non-linear structure of the film presents certain key events early on, then hides them away, and then circles back later. As the story progresses, its suspenseful and wrenching social justice component becomes increasingly urgent. Ibra finds himself in danger of deportation and Rafa does his best to help him seek shelter.

With its portrait of misunderstood youth and obscured sexual longing, the film resembles a modern-day Rebel Without a Cause. Adil Koukouh’s Ibra gives James Dean a run for his money as a sensitive soul with a necessarily hard shell, and Germán Alcarazu as Rafa effectively conveys how it feels to be inexorably drawn toward someone out of one’s usual sphere of reference. Watching these two teens find their way amid fraught societal circumstances provides a stirring depiction of clandestine first love.

This sensitive well-acted romantic drama puts a mature twist on the classic coming-out story. Filmed in Santiago, Chile, it follows an emotionally ill-at-ease, married architect’s journey of sexual discovery, which switches into high gear after he meets an intriguing gay man.

When we first encounter successful 35-year-old Bruno (the soulful Francisco Celhay), he has just made the difficult decision to separate from his loving wife in order to sort through his feelings. His concerned family calls it a selfish choice, and the couple’s young son is understandably confused and hurt by his doting dad’s decision to leave, but their familial bond appears strong.

After Bruno is approached to design a new architectural landmark, he is introduced to Fer (hunky livewire Matías Torres), a local tour guide with unique access to the soul of Santiago’s gorgeous cityscape, both ancient and modern. This professional hookup quickly turns to flirtation and much more, complicated by the undeniable chemistry — intellectual and physical — between the handsome leads.

The grayscale of the film’s title exists between the old world and the new, certainty and doubt, straight and gay.

Is Bruno gay or bisexual? Is he confused or incapable of commitment? The answers turn out to be not so blackand-white. In his assured feature film debut, director Claudio Marcone reveals new and surprising depths in a midlife coming-out tale by focusing on fine-grained emotional shadings.

In Spanish and Arabic with English subtitles

— ROD ARMSTRONG

In Spanish with English subtitles

— CHRIS KEECH

Thursday, June 18, 10:00 pm · Castro

Tuesday, June 23, 7:00 pm · Victoria

Tuesday, June 23, 9:30 pm · Castro

Friday, June 26, 7:00 pm · Victoria

Sunday, June 28, 4:00 pm · Castro

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Love Island Otok ljubavi DIR Jasmila Žbani´c 2014 Croatia, Germany, Switzerland,

Bosnia and Herzegovina 86 min In English, Croatian, and Bosnian with English subtitles

A lush getaway to a gorgeous haven on the Adriatic Sea leads to romantic antics and frisky business for amiable party boy Grebo, his very pregnant wife Liliane, and mysterious local dive master Flora. All Grebo and Liliane desire are some relaxing days in the sun before their extremely imminent baby arrives. But after winning over the resort crowd with his rousing rendition of the Scorpions’ “Winds of Change,” Grebo finds himself helplessly enchanted by the equally musical and profoundly seductive Flora. Her amiable flirtation and some very large communal blunts render him defenseless against her charms. His infatuation blinds him, however, to the obvious chemistry between Flora and Liliane, who share their own alluring secrets from the past. Toss in a cast of precociously observant youngsters, randy resort guests, and mischievous mermaids, and you’ve got a deliriously cinematic concoction worth relishing. This sexy, sun-soaked romp turns a new page for Bosnian writer-director Jasmila Žbani´c, known for award-winning dramas. Love Island is as dizzy and fizzy as a tropical cocktail — giddily shot through with kaleidoscopic color, irrepressible humor, and rhapsodic Mamma Mia-esque musical interludes, all tangled up with playful sexual politics in an intoxicating blend of progressive poly mores and irresistible fantasy escapades. This is one island you’ll never want to leave.

— LEAH LOSCHIAVO

Margarita, with a Straw

Mariposa (Butterfly)

DIR Shonali Bose 2014 India 100 min

DIR Marco Berger 2015 Argentina 102 min

For her third film, Delhi-based director Shonali Bose was inspired by her cousin Malini, a super-achiever with cerebral palsy. When asked what she wanted for her 40th birthday, Malini said she wanted to have sex.

This was a revelation for Bose, who went on to write the story of Laila, a talented composer-songwriter who views her cerebral palsy as a minor hurdle to overcome as she strives to fulfill all the typical desires of an ambitious and spirited young woman. When a fellow musician at Delhi University breaks her heart, Laila makes the difficult decision to leave her affectionate family and enter a writing program at NYU. During an Occupy Wall Street demonstration, Laila escapes from tear gas with Khanum, a beautiful BangladeshiAmerican woman (who is visually impaired and a Muslim), and their flirtation quickly blossoms into a full-on affair. But what will happen when Laila brings her new love home to India, where homosexuality is still illegal by legislation, and where such a romance among the differently abled is especially taboo?

Bose’s script won the Sundance Institute Screenwriters Lab prize for its frank but delicate command of multiple intersecting issues and identities. Under Bose’s direction, Laila’s challenges seem totally natural, like any of the varied and unexpected tests thrown at people who pursue their dreams. Desiring and pleasing another, fully participating in life with all its joys, wackiness, and losses — this heroine shows how it can be done, with a straw.

In his sexy new romantic drama, director Marco Berger takes the idea of the butterfly effect — which proposes that the tiniest flap of a butterfly’s wings can influence faraway events — and applies it to the amorous destinies of a likable group of friends and relatives near Buenos Aires. The film follows two parallel storylines, set in motion by a decision with vastly different romantic and erotic consequences for the protagonists: In one iteration, gorgeous young Romina is brought up as the sister of Germán; in the other, the two are strangers who meet through happenstance. In both, Germán is besotted but thwarted, either by a rival or by the taboo of incest. There’s another passion longing to take flight in Mariposa (Butterfly), that of the devastatingly handsome Bruno, who sublimates his same-sex attraction in both storylines until situations arise that allow him to express his desire. His coming-out process, sensually and sensitively depicted, becomes the catalyst for Romina and Germán realizing their own romantic destinies. Berger (Plan B, Frameline34; Absent, Frameline35) is an expert at conveying eroticism — from the sounds of the teeming (and steaming) outdoors to the conflagrations of his characters’ passions — and it’s a great pleasure to watch him play with notions of jealousy and repression, desire and destiny. The two storylines are brilliantly woven together (pay attention to the characters’ hair length!)—in this film, an afternoon river outing or a sleepover is rife with amorous potential, whether or not that meddling butterfly has flapped its wings.

In English and Hindi with English subtitles

In Spanish with English subtitles

— FRAKO LODEN

Tuesday, June 23, 9:30 pm · Elmwood

Tuesday, June 23, 9:30 pm · Piedmont

Thursday, June 25, 9:15 pm · Castro

Saturday, June 27, 6:30 pm · Roxie

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— ROD ARMSTRONG

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Saturday, June 20, 9:30 pm · Castro $10 members, $12 general · MARI20C sponsored by

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us features world

The New Girlfriend Une Nouvelle Amie

Portrait of a Serial Monogamist

DIR François Ozon 2014 France 107 min

Fortysomething Toronto TV producer Elsie is the kind of nice Jewish girl your mother warned you about: the serial monogamist who seems to have slept with everyone in town. She has her breakup speech memorized, she’s got a cute girl at the coffee shop ready for a rebound, and you just know she’s only going to break your heart.

When Elsie cuts it off with sweet performance artist Robyn, her friends challenge her to stay single for five months — no bars, no clubs, and (for god’s sake) no volunteer work. Easy, right? Enter hottie DJ Lolli, whose sexy intellect and love for adventure are impossible to ignore.

This clever and sophisticated Canadian dyke romcom with a bitchin’ pop-punk soundtrack is by turns thoughtful and fresh — spinning a new groove into the old tune that we can’t always get (back) what we want.

Don’t miss the hilarious scene in the pickup section of the dog park and the funniest cat funeral you’ve ever been to. The talented ensemble cast includes the Emmy-nominated writer and performer Diane Flacks (Elsie), Vag Halen lead singer and actress Vanessa Dunn (Lolli), and artist Carolyn Taylor (Queer as Folk) as Robyn.

Co-directors/writers/producers Zeidler (Deep Lez Film Craft, Frameline32) and Mitchell have earned a Best Canadian Media Award and Tony Award between them.

DIRS Christina Zeidler & John Mitchell 2014 Canada 84 min

In French with English subtitles

In his usual, biting fashion, 2006 Frameline Award recipient François Ozon (Swimming Pool, 8 Women, Time to Leave) peels back the polished veneer of the modern bourgeoisie to reveal a vivid and subversive exploration of triangulated love with his latest, The New Girlfriend. Opening with a touching montage of the blossoming friendship between two girls who met at age seven, Claire (Anaïs Demoustier, Elles) and Laura (Isild Le Besco, À tout de suite), the film jumps to Laura’s funeral, as Claire announces the commitment she made to look after her best friend’s widower David (Romain Duris, L’auberge espagnol) and their newborn baby.

This promise becomes much more than Claire bargained for when she walks in on David dressed as a woman. With subtle performances from both Demoustier and Duris and an airy, aware sense of humor, The New Girlfriend follows David’s transition into Virginia with the help of Claire — as new, untapped feelings begin to arise in her as well. A huge success at both the Toronto International and San Sebastian Film Festivals, Ozon’s absorbing tale of loss and desire also stars Raphaël Personnaz (The Princess of Montpensier) as Claire’s dashing husband and Aurore Clément (Paris, Texas) as Laura’s mother. This is Ozon at his very best as he exposes bourgeois facades with breathtaking beauty and exquisite timing, deftly displaying the intricate possibilities of love.

— JOE BOWMAN

— NATALIE MULFORD PRECEDED BY:

Together Forever dirs

Kris & Lindy Boustedt 2014 USA 8 min

A lesbian couple creates the perfect moment for their engagement and finds the grandiose in the everyday.

Seashore Beira-Mar DIRs Filipe Matzembacher & Marcio Reolon 2015 Brazil 83 min In Portuguese with English subtitles

Friends since childhood, Brazilian teenagers Martin (Mateus Almada) and Tomaz (Mauricio Barcellos) have since grown apart. When Martin’s grandfather dies, Tomaz journeys with him on a special mission to the windswept coastal town where the estranged family of his grandfather still lives.

There, in an abandoned seaside house, secrets are shared, old family wounds are re-opened, and the boys are challenged to sort out for themselves the meanings of friendship, independence, and love in a suddenly adult world.

A fine supporting cast and excellent performances by attractive young stars provide the innocence and hesitancy of youth that permeate Seashore, as the onetime boyhood friends delicately explore the nature of their friendship as maturing young men. Directed by Filipe Matzembacher and Marcio Reolon (A Ballet Dialogue, Frameline37) with an undercurrent of erotic tension that culminates in tender and surprising ways, Seashore brilliantly defies viewer expectations with its confident, deliberate pacing and pronounced yet subtle sense of the mysterious. The spare, dreamlike narrative simultaneously withholds and provides important information while moving through elliptical surprises rife with possibilities. A unique use of sound and image conveys inner states of character, complementing Seashore’s layered and elastic wintertime photography, aided by a nostalgic indie soundtrack (including a Daniel Johnston song). This quiet, haunting, and poetic work of art mirrors the viewer’s own reflections, resulting in an exceptionally rewarding experience.

— TIM SIKA

Saturday, June 20, 7:00 pm · Victoria

Sunday, June 21, 9:15 pm · Victoria

Thursday, June 25, 9:15 pm · Piedmont

Saturday, June 27, 9:00 pm · Roxie

Thursday, June 25, 1:30 pm · Castro

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Summer Nights Les Nuits d’été

Sworn Virgin Vergine giurata

Two 4 One

DIR Mario Fanfani 2014 France 100 min

DIR Laura Bispuri 2015 Italy, Switzerland, Germany,

It’s 1959 in a modest city in Alsace, and Michel, a respectable, mild-mannered bureaucrat, has a career in local government that’s on the rise. His wife, Hélène, is an intelligent beauty focused on raising their young son and doing good in the community. They may seem like the perfect couple, but at home, their relationship is clearly strained — and only Michel knows why.

He is keeping a secret — living a double life: Every weekend he can get away, he heads to a secluded country home where he lives as Mylène, an elegant, delicate bourgeoise with auburn hair and a preference for understated jewelry. Mylène and her longtime friend Flavia (who lives her weekdays as a man with the name Jean-Marie) have only these secluded hours — and the time they can snatch to spend at an underground cabaret for “transvestites” (the term of the time)—to truly be themselves.

With this atmosopheric period piece, director Mario Fanfani has delivered a thoughtful, layered, and quirky drama (though there are moments of delightful comedy, too) that asks questions of gender, love, and identity — both personal and national, as the film plays out against the backdrop of France’s embroilment in the Algerian War for Independence. Michel/Mylène, played marvelously by well-known French actor Guillaume de Tonquédec, is a fascinating and relatable character: a woman who is beginning to realize that she can no longer hide her true self.

Mark arrives in Milan at the doorstep of his estranged stepsister Lila, who reluctantly lets him inside, prompting a series of carefully orchestrated flashbacks that reveal his story. Born as a girl and named Hana, but growing up extremely tomboyish in an Albanian mountain village where very strict ideas about gender roles and womanhood persist, she agrees to live and work as a man. Years later, questioning his choice, Mark relocates to Italy, a place where greater gender fluidity is possible, and finds a newfound freedom in crafting an authentic gender expression.

Notions of gender, culture, and sexuality swirl potently throughout Laura Bispuri’s visually splendid and moving debut film. Adapting an acclaimed novel by Elvira Dones, director Bispuri sensitively charts Mark’s reacquaintance with a body and mind suppressed, particularly through trips to a local pool, where he is confronted by physiques of all kinds in various stages of undress. His relationship with Lila undergoes a similar recalibration as fraught family history and tension between the two begin to resurface. Alba Rohrwacher (Tilda Swinton’s daughter in I Am Love), who is swiftly becoming one of Italian cinema’s brightest lights, masterfully conveys the conflicting feelings, sexual curiosity, and emotional resourcefulness of the main character, while Bispuri, who spent over three years traveling to remote, scenically stunning locations in Albania to work on the film, vividly conveys her protagonist’s reabsorption into the world and full self-expression.

You may think you’ve heard it all when it comes to exes crossing boundaries, but this refreshing Canadian trans romcom takes the “I didn’t know who else to call” story to a new level — when Miriam rings up her ex-partner Adam with a desperate plea for help: Her biological clock is ticking rather loudly, and she’s purchased an at-home insemination kit. Could Adam pretty please help her out with the conception process? With their relationship having ended two years ago, before his transition, Adam is quite surprised to hear from Miriam, who (as far as he knows) is already in another committed relationship. But saying no is easier said than done, so Adam lends a helping hand (and more) while Miriam’s significant other is out of town — and romance rekindles as the two cozy up again.

Adam continues to struggle with the building of a male identity and career at a predominantly “dudebro” engineering firm, and just as he is about to complete a deeply desired stage of his gender confirmation, he gets unexpected news: Adam is pregnant. Shell-shocked by the seemingly impossible aftermath of his déjà vu encounter with Miriam, Adam reassesses his life — all the while unaware that Miriam has a growing baby bump of her own. With an impeccably cast ensemble delivering nuanced, endearing performances, director Maureen Bradley’s feature debut paints a lovingly comic portrayal of a relationship caught between the ghosts of the past and the uncertainties of the future.

In French with English subtitles

— CHARLES PURDY

DIR Maureen Bradley 2014 Canada 77 min

Albania, Republic of Kosovo 90 min In Albanian and Italian with English subtitles

— JULIA BARBOSA

— ROD ARMSTRONG

Monday, June 22, 9:15 pm · Roxie

Saturday, June 20, 9:30 pm · Victoria

Wednesday, June 24, 9:30 pm · Castro

Wednesday, June 24, 9:30 pm · Elmwood

Thursday, June 25, 9:30 pm · Elmwood

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us features world

While You Weren’t Looking

Xenia

DIR Catherine Stewart 2015 South Africa 72 min

DIR Panos H. Koutras 2014 Greece, France, Belgium

In Afrikaans, English, and Xhosa with English subtitles

Change has a way of creeping up on you while you’re not looking: the wrinkles that weren’t there before, new doubts in an old relationship, and harsh reality replacing youthful ideals. For Terri and Dez, celebrating their anniversary as their adopted daughter Asanda’s 18th birthday approaches, their once comfortable life is starting to crumble. Terri, with little to do in her well-kept Cape Town home, accidentally finds a sexy surprise from Dez, and a spark of hope for rekindling their fire replaces her listlessness — until she realizes that the real surprise is that the gift wasn’t meant for her. Dez, a former activist turned real estate developer, has lost her drive for social justice and conveniently convinces herself that displacing locals is for the greater good.

In her quest to have it all, she barely notices Terri pulling away. While heteronormativity absorbs their former radical identities, their daughter becomes more aware that she isn’t in touch with her Xhosa roots. Asanda ditches her white boyfriend, takes out her weave to go natural, and finds herself intrigued by Shado, a packing masculine-of-center “tommy boy” who lives in Khayelitsha, a township on the edge of Cape Town, where crime and “corrective” rape are the norm. While You Weren’t Looking, produced by the Out in Africa Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, examines the complexities of being gay in post-Apartheid South Africa while deftly tackling issues of class, intersectionality, and infidelity.

— ANGELIQUE SMITH

This film contains depictions of homophobic violence.

128 min In Greek and Albanian with English subtitles

Following the death of their mother, two half-Albanian brothers — 15-year-old Dany, a spunky twink with a pet bunny rabbit, and his straight older brother, Odysseas, who has the singing voice of an angel — embark on a surreal road trip to find their estranged Greek father in this alternately poignant and bold fable. One of the highlights of both the Cannes and Toronto International Film Festivals, Xenia takes a wholly original and supremely entertaining look at the complex bonds of family, the strength of having a shared history, and the importance of knowing where you come from. Its sincerity, however, is brilliantly mixed with touches of the absurd (think Donnie Darko, Wild at Heart, or The Doom Generation). Some of the obstacles the brothers run into, both real and fantastical, include an American Idol-esque singing competition; choreographed, underwear-clad Italian disco musical numbers; a beautiful abandoned hotel in the middle of a forest (the titular “Xenia”); and a giant talking rabbit. All the while, the film remains grounded in the brothers’ very real emotional bond, their playful chemistry, and their shared challenge of trying to find a place where they belong even in a country that makes them feel like outsiders. Emerging writer-director Panos H. Koutras (Strella) co-wrote Xenia, which won the prize for Best Queer Film at the Chicago International Film Festival, with fellow Greek filmmaker Panayotis Evangelidis (The Life and Death of Celso Junior, Frameline36).

— JOE BOWMAN

Saturday, June 20, 9:30 pm · Roxie

Wednesday, June 24, 9:15 pm · Victoria

Wednesday, June 24, 7:00 pm · Victoria

Saturday, June 27, 9:00 pm · Victoria

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docs

Alex & Ali

The Amina Profile

DIR Malachi Leopold 2014 USA 83 min

DIR Sophie Deraspe 2014 Canada 84 min

Two improbable soul mates — Alex, an American Peace Corps volunteer, and Ali, a handsome young Iranian — met in 1967 in Tehran and fell in love. In a country where homosexuality is taboo (and now is punishable by death), they maintained a ten-year relationship as secret lovers until the Islamic Revolution forced Alex to flee to the United States. In the following three decades, even as the political situation made it impossible for them to see each other or speak of their relationship, their love became even stronger as they cautiously communicated from afar through correspondence, phone, and email. Now in 2012, Alex and Ali attempt to reunite on neutral ground in Istanbul with the hope of relocating to the U.S. to rekindle their love. But unforeseen twists of fate and the changes wrought by 30 years of separation jeopardize their hopes to reclaim the happiness for which they’ve been longing.

Directed by Malachi Leopold (Standing Silent), this heartrending and suspenseful documentary captures the raw and spontaneous emotions and sentiment that highlight the complexities of cultural conditioning, ideological differences, and changing political realities amid the universality of human connection. Named Best Documentary at the 2015 Melbourne Queer Film Festival and underscored by a superb, haunting musical soundtrack, Alex & Ali is an eloquent plea for human rights and equality.

Strap yourself in for a wild ride that dashes from intimate love story to international mystery in the blink of an eye. Filmmaker Sophie Deraspe’s thoroughly thrilling and markedly modern documentary exposes the fluid reality of cyber life. Filled with captivating questions about the unadulterated exhilaration of virtual love and cultural divides, this doc will give you a lot to talk about.

When Sandra, in Montreal, connects online with Amina, a young writer in Syria, a passionate relationship ignites. After Amina gains worldwide notoriety for her activist blog “A Gay Girl in Damascus,” their world turns upside down. In the midst of 2011’s Arab Spring, Amina suddenly disappears, and Sandra begins a global search for the lover she’s never met. From here, the story twists and turns into far-out and unexpected places that prove truth is stranger than fiction.

Deraspe’s entrancing documentary explores everevolving landscapes with the eye of a poet and the intellect of an investigative journalist. Fascinating archival footage, ethereal artistic interludes, and a hypnotic soundtrack are combined with intense interviews and mind-blowing revelations to create a multidimensional documentary experience. Part political parable, part complex love story, The Amina Profile is a profound and provocative exploration of the power and fragility of contemporary connections.

In English and Farsi with English subtitles

In English, French, and Arabic with English subtitles

— BRENDAN PETERSON

— TIM SIKA

PRECEDED BY:

Wayne dir

Ascendance: The Angels of Change Documentary DIR Deb Simone 2015 USA 75 min

As the world awakens to the fullness of the gender spectrum, filmmaker Deb Simone takes us backstage at the 2014 Angels of Change runway show and calendar launch fundraiser, as seasoned mentors prepare a diverse group of trans youth for the event. These young people engage in an intentional process of becoming visible, having a voice, and claiming a future as vital community members while they develop deep bonds of friendship and solidarity.

All great mentors give their charges roots and wings. The Center for Trans Youth Health and Development at Children’s Hospital LA provides solid ground for trans youth from all socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds, with a full range of medical and social services that provide space for them to transition safely and live authentically. And the wings? Angel wings, worn at the finale of the runway show. Vivacious program coordinator Bamby Salcedo, her colleagues at the Center, and Angels of Change graduates take these fierce youth through their paces, coaching them to walk the runway dressed in their personal style, dressed as their future profession, and totally owning their place as Angels on the runway.

Unequivocally inspiring with an upbeat resonance that celebrates its subjects, Ascendance pays tribute to trans pioneers’ hard-won victories in self-acceptance and self-love by spotlighting a lifeline program that smoothes the transition from street to strut. Sit back and watch these young people fly.

— CAROL HARADA

Mario Galarreta 2015 USA 9 min

After 50 years of marriage, an octogenarian with Alzheimer’s seeks a forbidden love from his youth.

Sunday, June 21, 4:00 pm · Roxie

Wednesday, June 24, 4:00 pm · Castro

Saturday, June 20, 11:00 am · Victoria

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docs

El Canto del Colibri

Deep Run

Desert Migration

DIR Marco Castro-Bojorquez 2015 USA 50 min

DIR Hillevi Loven 2015 USA 75 min

DIR Daniel Cardone 2015 USA 80 min

Executive produced by Susan Sarandon and helmed

by Hillevi Loven, Deep Run is a compelling portrait of courageous Southern queer youth on a quest for belonging within their families of origin and within a community where faith is a sacred, binding commonality.

Following early inklings of his male identity, young transman Cole perseveres through continued violence and rejection from his family, school, and church. With the help of loyal allies, Cole finds his tenuous place in his community and longs for a love to call his own.

After one girlfriend is “saved” by the church, resulting in the end of their relationship, Cole loses hope. Enter his true love, Ashley, who takes a parallel journey to come to terms with her own needs for belonging.

With the almighty power to uplift or destroy, churches are the center of family and community life for the young couple. But faced with blatant religious exclusion, they see pressures continue to grow as they seek spiritual refuge while dodging depression, addiction, violence, and suicide. This attempt to live out loud — a daunting challenge in rural North Carolina, where conservative Christianity rules — tests Cole and Ashley’s love for each other and for their God, until sudden events lead to a greater spiritual awakening and an even more unshakable faith.

“I got off the plane at ten at night, and it was 100 degrees and it was very windy and very dry. It felt so wonderful.” So recalls Joel, one of the dozen or so guys living with long-term HIV/AIDS profiled in the unflinching documentary Desert Migration, of his arrival in Palm Springs, California. Like throngs of fellow gay men in their fifties and sixties who have made the oasis of intense heat, Speedo-clad hotties, and towering palm trees their adopted home, Joel came in search of hospitable environs in which to nurture health, healing, and a renewed sense of community. He finds kindred spirits struggling with illness, aging, addiction, and displacement in this lost horizon of unrelenting sunshine. Having prepared for early demise following their diagnoses in the era before drug cocktails, these men are now unexpectedly approaching their autumn years. From Juan, with his magnificent gray tresses, to tattooed, pierced, and polyamorous Doc, all the men profiled here are remarkably candid, united by seroconversion yet wonderfully diverse in looks and outlooks. All ache to live fully.

Director Daniel Cardone favors stark compositions as he focuses on the men’s daily routines — awaking naked, taking meds, working out at the gym, cooling down in the pool, commiserating at a dinner party, or prepping for a sling session with a play buddy.

These documentary segments are elegantly intercut with more stylized scenes of his subjects wandering in the desert, their paths uncertain, their dignity inspiring.

In Spanish with English subtitles

In this intimate documentary, immigrant Latino fathers recount the impact of their children’s coming out. Bay Area filmmaker Marco Castro-Bojorquez (Tres Gota de Agua, Frameline35) continues a candid conversation about LGBTQ issues that is often stifled in Latino communities, where a culture of machismo prevails.

While letting sons and daughters expose their struggles in asserting their identity within oppressive families, the film also allows fathers to speak frankly about their conflicts and fears; they reflect on their own experiences in troubled households and open up about striving toward a renewed perspective of love. Through heartfelt testimonies, these families delve into issues of immigration, prejudice, and isolation, while thoughtfully asking questions of their communities, culture, and even their religious beliefs. The result is a powerfully healing lesson on acceptance, humility, and solidarity.

— JULIA BARBOSA

PRECEDED BY:

Mamis: A Family Portrait dir Virginia Fuentes 2013 Cuba 19 min In Spanish with English subtitles

In Cuba, where their access to adoption and assisted reproduction is prohibited, lesbians who want to be mothers face extra challenges as they try to realize their dreams. Exploring ideas of personal rebellion, Mamis reveals that there is often a way to get around the rules.

— CAROL HARADA

This film was a recipient of a Frameline Completion Fund grant.

— STEVEN JENKINS

Saturday, June 20, 1:30 pm · Roxie $8 members, $10 general · CANT20R

Wednesday, June 24, 7:00 pm · Elmwood

Friday, June 26, 1:30 pm · Castro

Thursday, June 25, 4:00 pm · Castro

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docs

Do I Sound Gay? DIR David Thorpe 2014 USA 77 min

Is it the sibilant “s,” or is it the drawn-out vowels?

Is it the two-dollar vocabulary, or is it a certain theatrical quality acquired after too many viewings of All About Eve or Mean Girls? Whatever it is, we know it when we hear it: “gay voice”—a tone and way of speaking that, if you believe the stereotype, announce homosexuality.

Documentarian David Thorpe has gay voice. And after a breakup and an early-forties crisis of confidence, he decides that his voice is preventing him from finding happiness. Where did it come from? And how can he get rid of it? With these questions, he visits numerous speech therapists and delves into his own past.

This lighthearted (and often hilarious), taboo-busting film features great commentary from celebrities like George Takei, Dan Savage, Tim Gunn, and David Sedaris, as well as illustrative footage of Paul Lynde, Liberace, Truman Capote, and others. Linguists and cultural historians provide insight into gay speech patterns, code-switching, and what it means to “sound gay.”

These experts help us (and ultimately the filmmaker himself) understand why Thorpe — who, by the way, is not some closet case but a handsome, likable, very out gay man living by all appearances a marvelous gay life in New York City — could possibly be so ashamed of such a rich vocal heritage.

— CHARLES PURDY

Fassbinder: To Love Without Demands Fassbinder: at elske uden at kræve

Feelings Are Facts: The Life of Yvonne Rainer

DIR Christian Braad Thomsen 2015 Denmark 109 min

In 1966, Yvonne Rainer, a young dancer and choreographer, already a founding member of the vastly influential Judson Dance Theater, made an unconventional solo that became a decisive moment in the history of contemporary art. Director Jack Walsh’s inviting portrait of Rainer begins with Trio A’s pivotal new ways of seeing performance and the body. The film then steps back to survey the cultural ground that gave rise not only to this revolutionary work but also to the equally radical dance and film career of Rainer, an endlessly resourceful intellect and feminist. Interweaving tantalizing performances with reflections from an impressive roster of colleagues (including Judson veterans Steve Paxton, Simone Forti, and Lucinda Childs, as well as Bay Area scholar B. Ruby Rich), the film features forthright interviews with Rainer herself, now 80 and still a vital, engaged artist. Covering everything from early influences like Merce Cunningham and John Cage to her rocky upbringing amid San Francisco anarchist circles, coming out as a lesbian in her fifties, and her return to dance at the behest of Mikhail Baryshnikov, this insightful documentary has as much to say about the politics of identity as it does about the always-related concerns of one of the preeminent artists of our time.

In German with English subtitles

Rainer Werner Fassbinder would have been 70 this year, though it’s impossible to imagine the uncompromising German director, writer, and actor cloaked in a mantle of respectability. It was his destiny, and his determination, to push buttons and challenge taboos until his heart unexpectedly gave out in 1982. A charismatic character — openly gay in the movie business when that was still a radical act — who inspired and exploited the adoration of his collaborators and lovers, Fassbinder left a legacy of some 40 discomfiting features and two remarkable miniseries — as well as a lingering mystery about the source of his obsessiveness.

Danish filmmaker Christian Braad Thomsen,who befriended Fassbinder after the chilly reception to his feature debut, Love Is Colder Than Death, at the 1969 Berlin Film Festival, examines the complicated artist’s life and work from a psychological standpoint. Drawing on strikingly candid recent conversations with key intimates such as actress Irm Hermann and actor and assistant director Harry Baer, as well as rarely seen interviews he filmed with Fassbinder in the 1970s, Thomsen crafts a riveting portrait of a spoiled boy, raised by disparate family members, who, as an adult, sought to create an ad hoc family of his cast and crew.

Stuffed with scenes from Fassbinder’s brilliant, brutal films (his last, most overtly gay film, Querelle, plays in Frameline39, see page 41), this bracing documentary illuminates how the director’s personality informed his art and galvanized his actors.

— MICHAEL FOX

DIR Jack Walsh 2014 USA 86 min

— ROBERT AVILA

This film was a recipient of a Frameline Completion Fund grant.

PRECEDED BY:

From the Beginning dir

Chris Mason Johnson 2014 USA 5 min

In a redwood forest, three friends dance in this gorgeously shot modern dance short film by the director of the feature film Test (Frameline37).

Sunday, June 21, 1:30 pm · Castro

Tuesday, June 23, 4:00 pm · Castro

Saturday, June 27, 11:00 am · Castro

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docs

Finding Phong

Game Face

DIRS Tran Phuong Thao & Swann Dubus 2015

DIR Michiel Thomas 2014 USA 98 min

Vietnam 92 min In Vietnamese with English subtitles

Part intimate video diary and part traditional documentary, Finding Phong spans more than a year in the life of Phong, a twentysomething transwoman from a small village in Vietnam. Phong is living and studying Vietnam’s capital, Hanoi, as she begins her transition.

After she returns to her home from an initial trip to Thailand (as gender confirmation surgery has only recently become available in Vietnam) and begins taking hormones, Phong slowly comes out of her shell.

Refreshingly frank, the film highlights the depth and supreme relief of this process — thanks to Phong’s occasional use of a hand-held camera to build chapters in a video diary. Along the way, Phong learns that her transition is much more than physical, and that becoming a woman involves more than hormones and surgery.

The youngest of six children, Phong must reconcile her family to her transition. While her older siblings are supportive, her elderly parents take a little more convincing. “I’ve had nearly thirty years of sadness,” she tells her reluctant mother during a Lunar New Year visit. “You should be happy that my dream is about to come true.” Phong’s 72-year-old mother and 87-yearold father do want what’s best for their child, even when it’s hard for them to understand. Eventually, with the support of her friends and family, Phong makes the final trip back to Thailand to complete her transformation.

From start to end, the difference in Phong throughout her journey and the complexity of family love and acceptance are astounding.

Mind/Game: The Unquiet Journey of Chamique Holdsclaw

Exploring the experiences of LGBTQ SPlTLIGHT athletes and their struggle for accepSPORTS tance within their sports and within society, this forthright, sincere documentary tracks the parallel stories of the first transgender pro mixed martial arts fighter and a gay college hoops player who is cautiously planning his coming out.

Professional MMA fighter Fallon Fox delicately weighs the pros and cons of coming out as transgender in her career and life. Fox confronts public curiosity head-on, paving the way for other transgender athletes as she tackles the press, her sport, and society with audacity and professionalism. With support from openly gay MMA fighter Liz Carmouche and friends like Kye Allums, an openly transgender collegiate athlete, Fox grows, both in and out of the ring.

In a related story, a rising basketball player confronts his ambivalence about whether he should come out to his teammates and the collegiate community. Shunned early in life for being gay, he spends part of his adolescence in jail for fraud. The experience motivates him to passionately pursue a career in basketball, landing him at a two-year college in Oklahoma.

With advice from the first openly gay active NBA player, Jason Collins, will he be able to find the right time to come out and make a stand? Filmmaker Michiel Thomas skillfully shatters stereotypes about the athletic closet and reaffirms the central importance of the love of the game for these two tenacious competitors.

— SEAN KRAINERT

— MORDECAI STAYTON

SPlTLIGHT

SPORTS Growing up in the projects of Astoria, Queens, with an alcoholic mother and a schizophrenic father, 11-year-old Chamique Holdsclaw channeled the turbulence of her childhood into a newfound passion: basketball. By high school, the dynamic forward was the talk of the New York sports scene, and when she took the courts for the top-ranked University of Tennessee’s Lady Vols, she was hailed as the “female Michael Jordan,” transforming the sport through her artistry and sheer drive. She seemed destined for a spectacular career — until her long-suppressed battles with mental illness threatened to derail her life. Two-time Academy Award nominee Rick Goldsmith focuses this intimate profile not only on Holdsclaw’s athletic accomplishments, but on her particular achievement: becoming an outspoken advocate for mental health. Holdsclaw’s special mission is to reach communities where depression and bipolar disorder are too seldom acknowledged: among professional athletes, among African Americans, and particularly among youth, both straight and queer. As if to prove the difficulty of her battle against an unpredictable illness, even as Goldsmith was in the midst of shooting, Holdsclaw was arrested for a violent act against an ex-girlfriend. The film, narrated by Glenn Close, poignantly depicts Holdsclaw’s ongoing struggle for recovery and redemption.

— PETER L. STEIN

PRECEDED BY:

Gold Star dir

Igor Yankilevich 2014 USA 7 min

Saturday, June 20, 7:00 pm · Roxie

Two basketball players confront their strained relation­ ship in a game of one-on-one.

Thursday, June 25, 7:00 pm · Elmwood

Friday, June 26, 9:30 pm · Roxie

$10 members, $12 general · GAME20R

Saturday, June 27, 4:00 pm · Roxie

DIR Rick Goldsmith 2015 USA 56 min

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docs

Olya’s Love DIR Kirill Sakharnov 2014 Russia, Austria 68 min

In Russian with English subtitles

DIR Michelle Boyaner 2015 77 min

Olya, an LGBTQ activist, is devoted to her girlfriend, Galya. But is the struggle against homophobia her true love? Olya is Moscow-born and more outspoken than Galya, a young lesbian from the provinces.

Despite their differences, they intend to start a family and a life together. Much of their current life, however, is consumed by demonstrations against anti-homosexual propaganda in Russia. Alternately set on Moscow’s streets, capturing remarkable protest footage, and in the women’s home, the documentary judiciously explores the intersection of the idea of “freedom” in a couple’s public and personal lives. Premiered at the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam, Olya’s Love presents a powerful account of those who fight daily against persecution in Russia and — at its core — reveals a fearless woman’s search for someone to share her life and her love.

— WILL GARDNER

PRECEDED BY:

Victory Day Alina Rudnitskaya 2014 Russia 29 min In Russian with English subtitles

dir

While most Russians celebrate the annual Victory Day by commemorating their country’s defeat of Nazi Germany decades ago, six gay and lesbian couples share their own stories of government-instituted oppression.

In-home interviews reveal the domesticity and normalcy of these ardent pairs, juxtaposed with clips of homophobic Russians in power and the raucous celebrations just outside the windows of the subjects — the true enemy is obvious.

Saturday, June 20, 11:00 am · Roxie $8 members, $10 general · OLYA20R

Packed in a Trunk: The Lost Art of Edith Lake Wilkinson Part detective story, part rumination, and all celebration, this warm and vivid film unpacks a very personal history of what it meant to be an artist and a lesbian in early 20th century America. Emmy-winning writer and director Jane Anderson (Normal, Olive Kitteridge, If These Walls Could Talk 2) grew up surrounded by her great-aunt Edith’s radiant Post-Impressionist paintings, which had been discovered by her mother in a West Virginia attic.

The Fauvist colors and intimate subjects of the works are astonishing, but Edith Lake Wilkinson is virtually unknown. How could this be? Anderson set out to learn why, first as a young, freshly out lesbian in late-1970s New York City, and again, forty years later, as an accomplished artist in her own right, with a wife, a grown son, and a haunting feeling that hers was the life her greataunt should have been able to live.

Director Michelle Boyaner (A Finished Life: The Goodbye & No Regrets Tour, Frameline32) follows closely as Anderson retraces Edith’s story — she was committed to an insane asylum in 1924, at the peak of her career, separating her from her longtime partner Fannie and ending her art-making in the colonies of Provincetown — and combs through archives, consults experts, and even taps into the paranormal for clues about her life. Through the luminous, layered compositions of cinematographer-editor Barbara Green and under Anderson’s chatty, determined lead, Edith is revivified. Seen, she can now be known.

— LUCY LAIRD

Saturday, June 27, 1:30 pm · Victoria $8 members, $10 general · PACK27V

Peace of Mind DIR Cary Cronenwett 2014 USA, Haiti 77 min

In Creole and English with English subtitles

Cary Cronenwett’s beautifully constructed documentary is at once a poetic, highly personal, and generously balanced portrait of the late trans artist Flo McGarrell. Frameline audiences will fondly remember Maggots and Men (Frameline33), a stunning collaboration in which Cronenwett helmed the cinematic shipwreck of transmasculine sailors and Flo was the film’s brilliant art director. Focusing on the final chapter of his short life, this documentary shows Flo realizing a lifelong goal by becoming director of the FOSAJ Art Center in Jacmel, Haiti, a coastal town known for its artistic culture. His tenure proves transformative as the center becomes a refuge for queer community — and identity, influence, and privilege inform the subsequent process of cultural negotiation. Cronenwett summons an experimental visual landscape alongside archival footage, evoking the utopian motivation of FOSAJ’s outsider artists. This impulse is never stronger than in the film’s creative resurrection of the duo’s unfinished film project, Kathy Goes to Haiti, based on the novel by Kathy Acker. The film also weaves interviews with local artists and intimates, including Sue Frame, who recounts Flo’s death during the devastating earthquake of 2010. Out of the still evident rubble of that overwhelming disaster, Flo’s legacy and memory nurture one small but hopeful strand of renewal.

— ROBERT AVILA

PRECEDED BY:

Float dir

Sam Berliner 2015 USA 5 min

Stunningly celebratory, this artistic film is shot completely underwater featuring trans and genderqueer folks swimming naked.

Saturday, June 20, 1:30 pm · Victoria $8 members, $10 general · PEAC20V

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docs

Peter de Rome: Grandfather of Gay Porn

Reel in the Closet

The Royal Road

DIR Stu Maddux 2015 USA 82 min

DIR Jenni Olson 2015 USA 65 min

DIR Ethan Reid 2014 UK 97 min

Documentarian Stu Maddux (Gen Silent, Frameline35 Audience Award Winner) shifts his lens to focus on rare and important early film and video records of LGBTQ life in America. Reel in the Closet brings to light a trove of historical footage from an era when gay life was mostly left undocumented — fascinating and often poignant moving images from the 1930s through the AIDS epidemic, which are at risk of being lost to history without the efforts of the archivists who work to find, preserve, and catalogue them.

Home movies of gay house parties and vacation reels from the 1940s reveal the joyful exuberance and comfortable ease of social gatherings that would have been possible to witness only behind closed doors.

A film shot in Mona’s Candle Light, a lesbian “bohemian bar” in North Beach, features performances from a sultry chanteuse and a woman in a smart tan suit.

Later clips include works made by an early gay videoart collective, first-person documentation of Mattachine Society and ACT UP political activities, taped television news stories covering Anita Bryant and the Briggs Initiative, and raw news footage of the White Night riots in San Francisco.

Archivists interviewed in the film believe that large amounts of amateur documentation of LGBTQ life — whether stored in damp attics or discarded by careless heirs — has already been lost. And as the celluloid on which this important history was captured begins to degrade, their work to preserve this important history is as important now as it will ever be.

This is a road movie like no other. For one, it is in large part about the actual road — the 600-mile-long El Camino Real (also known as the King’s Highway), which runs from San Francisco to Los Angeles (and beyond). It is also about many other seemingly disconnected things, including the Spanish colonization of California, the Mexican-American War, and the controversial legacy of soon-to-be-canonized Father Junipero Serra; butch identity, the writings of Casanova, and the pursuit of beautiful but unattainable women; old-school Hollywood iconography and Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo; and the distinct pull and pleasure of nostalgia. Acclaimed San Francisco queer filmmaker Jenni Olson’s (The Joy of Life, Frameline29) engrossing cinematic personal essay is part memoir, part history lesson, part travelogue — and entirely original. Olson’s calm, confessional narration is gracefully layered (by renowned editor Dawn Logsdon, Big Joy: The Adventures of James Broughton, Frameline37) over a series of mesmerizing static images of diverse California landscapes, shot on 16mm film by award-winning cinematographer Sophie Constantinou (Regarding Susan Sontag, Frameline38). Each image is entirely devoid of people yet feels very much alive — a fixed moment in time and place that offers a singular representation of the lifeblood of California.

An official selection of Sundance 2015 and an intimate and deliberate meditation on memory, The Royal Road is Olson’s exquisite attempt to hang on to what is constantly changing.

Born in France and raised in prewar England, a sexually curious boy named Peter de Rome found a way to marry his two great loves: cinema and men. He captured the sexual adventures of friends and strangers alike on his Super 8 camera (remarkable in an age before cell phones); he then started showing his offbeat, playful, sex-positive films at house parties and private screenings in the early 1960s. These films’ groundbreaking erotic images, soon made him a significant figure in underground cinema and a pioneering voice in the emergence of gay porn. Courtly and puckish at nearly 90 years old when the documentary catches up with him, de Rome shares decadent, funny tales about admirers David Hockney, William S. Burroughs, and Andy Warhol — and reveals how his feature-length adult film Adam & Yves managed to capture the final screen cameo of Greta Garbo. Grandfather of Gay Porn is full of clips from his artful, explicit films (which span three decades), many of which have recently been archived by the British Film Institute for preservation. This portrait of a queer cinema visionary, who died just last year, charts Peter de Rome’s life and career as they unfolded alongside significant events in 20th-century gay history, from the Stonewall riots to the decriminalization of homosexuality.

—JOE BOWMAN PRECEDED BY:

Bearmania dir

Aron Kantor 2014 USA 3 min

Two nude men face off before wrestling in this sexually charged explosion of flesh and glitter.

— JOANNE PARSONT

— MICHAEL J. LOPRESTI

These films contain sexually explicit material.

Sunday, June 21, 11:00 am · Castro

Friday, June 19, 11:00 am · Castro

Thursday, June 25, 9:30 pm · Victoria

Saturday, June 27, 11:00 am · Victoria

Monday, June 22, 7:00 pm · Elmwood

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$10 members, $12 general · PETE25V

$8 members, $10 general · REEL21C

$8 members, $10 general · REEL27V

58 SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL LGBTQ FILM FESTIVAL

$8 members, $10 general · ROYA19C

$10 members, $12 general · ROYA22E

docs

The Same Difference

Scrum

DIR Nneka Onuroah 2014 USA 67 min

DIR Poppy Stockell 2015 Australia 54 min

King Kellz, the hottest performer at City of Doms, New York’s premier stud/AG (Aggressives) strip club, has the full package: a deep, luxurious voice; a masculine swagger; and a long, wavy weave that she proudly installs herself. Her fellow AGs hate on her for wearing a weave, but Kellz refuses to accept that there is only one way to be masculine, remarking, “It’s not what you wear. It’s your demeanor and how your carry yourself....

Your baggy clothes don’t deter­mine your character.”

The Same Difference is a compelling documentary that broadens the definition of what it means to be a stud. Self-identified studs — and the women who love them — discuss hypocrisy in terms of gender roles and performative expectations within the stud/AG community. This film features many queer celebrities, including actress Felicia “Snoop” Pearson from the critically acclaimed HBO drama The Wire, AzMarie Livingston from America’s Next Top Model and FOX’s hit series Empire, Dee Pimpin from MTV’s Catfish, Crissle West from the popular podcast The Read, and Lea DeLaria and Danielle Brooks from Orange Is the New Black.

From stud-on-stud relationships, to AGs who decide to get pregnant, to studs dressing femme for pay, director Nneka Onuroah’s engaging documentary ensures that no topic is left untouched.

Rugby is always about trying to advance the ball forward, but director Poppy Stockell’s steamy, pulsating, gritty documentary concerns players seeking acceptance and baring their very souls (and plenty more) on the field. Scrum might technically refer to restarting a play in order to gain control of the ball, but it’s really about a group of guys packing close together in one place — in this case, gay rugby’s 7th Annual Bingham Cup in Sydney, with 1,000 participants from 15 countries. The documentary zeroes in on three determined gay athletes vying for a spot on the elite Sydney Convicts team: Aki, the Japanese outsider who worked tirelessly for two years so he could travel to Sydney; Brennan, a hunky Canadian jock who was built for contact sports but rejected by his former, straight teammates after they discovered he was gay; and Pearse, the Irish backpacker bullied in school, tired of being continually put down. Scrum pulls the viewer right into the sweaty, grueling Bingham Cup, becoming not only a dramatic competition film, but also a film that finds the heart of the sport’s universal themes: acceptance, teamwork, and mud-soaked male camaraderie.

— TAYLOR HODGES

PRECEDED BY:

Heft dir

Alexandria Wright 2014 USA 10 min

Set in the East Bay, Heft is about the daily encounters between a large queer black woman and the suitors and scoundrels who vie for her attention.

— BRIAN BROMBERGER PRECEDED BY:

Camouflage dirs Stephan Kämpf & Andreas Kessler 2014 Germany 8 min In German with English subtitles

During a military exercise in the woods, two soldiers cover each other’s faces in camouflage paint, as every trembling of their fingers carries the weight of the intimate moment.

Monday, June 22, 7:00 pm · Victoria

Tuesday, June 23, 7:00 pm · Roxie $10 members, $12 general · SAME23R

SPlTLIGHT SPORTS

Seed Money: The Chuck Holmes Story DIR Michael Stabile 2014 USA 70 min

It’s an only-in-San-Francisco story: closeted Indiana boy heads for the gay mecca, comes out in the fabulous 1970s, builds an adult-entertainment empire, befriends David Geffen and Bill Clinton, helps found the Human Rights Campaign, donates millions to community causes, succumbs to AIDS, and is honored as the namesake of the SF LGBT Center — all while indulging his obsession with hairless bubble butts in visionary porn epics. This bio, by turns salacious, poignant, and inspiring, belongs to infamous provocateur and philanthropist Chuck Holmes, the subject of the (a)rousing documentary Seed Money. As the founder of Falcon Studios, Holmes created hardcore extravaganzas like The Other Side of Aspen for the VHS-and-cocaine era and parlayed his success into activism. Though LGBT groups were happy to have his moolah, they sometimes shunned their benefactor because of his background in the jizz biz. Today, Holmes is rightfully recognized as a hero both for liberating a generation’s libido and for supporting its members through their darkest days. Director Michael Stabile (Smut Capital of America, Frameline35) celebrates Holmes via interviews with porn icons Chi Chi LaRue and Jeff Stryker, politicos Mark Leno and Carole Migden, and Holmes’s longtime partner, Hot House honcho Steven Scarborough.

— STEVEN JENKINS PRECEDED BY:

Health Class dir

Brad McDermott 2014 Canada 8 min

Trevor confronts his high school sex ed teacher with re-imagined, more explicit materials.

$10 members, $12 general · SCRU22V

These films contain sexually explicit material.

Friday, June 26, 11:00 am · Castro

Sunday, June 21, 9:15 pm · Castro

sponsored by

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$8 members, $10 general · SCRU26C

$10 members, $12 general · SEED21C

WWW.FRAMELINE.ORG 59

docs

To Russia With Love

SPlTLIGHT SPORTS

DIR Noam Gonick 2014 USA 80 min

In the run-up to the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, the Russian government’s increasingly oppressive legislation outlawing so-called “homosexual propaganda” unintentionally put a group of foreigners into the spotlight: the few out lesbian and gay athletes and broadcasters who would be attending the Olympics and performing on the public stage. How would they register their protest, if at all? Faced with a hostile host country, should they risk their safety and become activists, or boycott, or shut out the politics and simply perform well in the biggest professional moment of their lives? To Russia With Love, a highly entertaining, fast-moving documentary, charts the journeys of several high-profile LGBT Olympians as they navigate the choppy, unfamiliar waters where competitive sports, human rights, and politics intersect. Former Olympic figure-skating medalist, NBC commentator, and quick-witted fashion plate Johnny Weir is the film’s de facto central character, being Sochi’s most visible, if also least politicized, out participant. We eavesdrop on conversations with LGBT snowboarders, skaters, and sledders, as they all wrestle with being true to their community as well as their careers. Ex-athletes with less to lose, like Billie Jean King and Greg Louganis, are on hand to provide a moral compass. Jane Lynch narrates the story, which admirably does not shy away from acknowledging the ultimately tepid displays of protest by foreign athletes and nations, even as Russian allies like Pussy Riot were being beaten with whips at Sochi’s gates.

— PETER L. STEIN

Visible Silence DIR Ruth Gumnit 2015 Thailand, USA 42 min

In Thai with English subtitles

DIR Barbara Hammer 2015 USA 79 min

In Thai society, a woman who embodies a masculine gender presentation and expresses affection toward another woman is labeled a “tom” and devalued for being a lesbian. A more traditionally feminine woman who prefers the company of toms is a “dee” and also considered abnormal. Award-winning filmmaker Ruth Gumnit (Don’t Fence Me In: Major Mary and the Karen Refugees from Burma, Frameline29), collaborating with a bi-national team, takes a delicate but probing look at Thai women in such relationships as they decide whether to regain society’s approval by marrying a man or risk their careers, family support, and reputation for love with another woman. Through their own words and images we’re treated to a rich panorama of lesbian experience in Thailand: lesbians are elephant tour guides, Buddhist nuns, professors, and rice farmers, who find ways to accommodate their goals and passions even within the silence.

—FRAKO LODEN

This film is a recipient of a Frameline Completion Fund grant.

PRECEDED BY:

Adrift in Sunset dir

Narissa Lee 2015 USA 21 min

Dao’s gallivanting ways come to a halt when her family and romantic lives collide in this intimate film about love and loss.

Sex, Politics, & Sticky Rice dir

Welcome to This House, a film about Elizabeth Bishop

Tina Takemoto 2014 USA 8 min

Five Asian American lesbians recount their adventures in sex, love, and activism since the 1980s.

Poet Elizabeth Bishop has gained notoriety as much for her tempestuous romance with Lota de Macedo Soares as for her poetry. While that affair inspired a book and a movie (Reaching for the Moon, Frameline37), this new documentary broadens the focus and puts the Lota affair in context. Frameline24 Award recipient Barbara Hammer (whose previous films at Frameline are too numerous to list!) creates a layered portrait of the person behind the poet, from her childhood in Nova Scotia to her death in 1979.

Bishop described herself as “timorously kicking around the coastlines of the world,” and the film is loosely organized around her stays in Nova Scotia, Key West, Brazil, and Cambridge — the homes she made for herself and the lovers she took. Never “out” as a lesbian — the concept would have been foreign to the writer who graduated from Vassar in the thirties — Bishop nonetheless actively pursued women, from her first summer-camp crush to the May-December romance that was her last affair.

Hammer examines Bishop from all angles, interviewing everyone from literary luminaries like Marie-Claire Blais and Edmund White to Lota’s aged former maid. Hammer pulls the viewer into Bishop’s world, blending present-day footage of each location with archival photos, and recreating moments in the writer’s life. Throughout the film we hear Bishop’s own words, read by Kathleen Chalfant, revealing yet another facet of a complicated and passionate woman.

— MONICA NOLAN

Sunday, June 21, 4:00 pm · Victoria

Tuesday, June 23, 7:00 pm · Elmwood

Thursday, June 25, 7:00 pm · Victoria

Thursday, June 25, 7:00 pm · Piedmont

Thursday, June 25, 7:00 pm · Roxie

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$8 members, $10 general · VISI21V $10 members, $12 general · TORU25V

$10 members, $12 general · VISI25P

60 SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL LGBTQ FILM FESTIVAL

$10 members, $12 general · WELC23E

$10 members, $12 general · WELC25R

schedule Thursday June 18 Castro

Friday June 19 Castro 11:00 am The Royal Road ROYA19C p.58 D

11 AM

NOON

Roxie

Saturday June 20 Victoria

Castro 11:00 am Fun in Boys Shorts FIBS20C p.63 S

Roxie 11:00 am Olya’s Love OLYA20R p.57 D

Sunday June 21

Victoria 11:00 am Ascendance: The Angels of Change ASCE20V p.53 D

Castro 11:00 am Reel in the Closet REEL21C p.58 D

Roxie Victoria 10:30 am 11:00 am Akeelah and the Bee Homegrown AKEE21R HOME21V p.64 p.67 F

S

1 PM

2 PM

3 PM

4 PM

5 PM

1:30 pm Thirst & Desire THIR19C p.66 S

1:30 pm 1:30 pm Fun in Girls Shorts El Canto del Colibrí FIGS20C CANT20R p.54 D p.63 S

1:30 pm Peace of Mind PEAC20V p.57 D

1:30 pm Do I Sound Gay? DOIS21C p.55 D

1:30 pm Coming Up Queer COMI21R p.63 S

1:30 pm Broads to Watch Out For! BROA21V p.62 S

4:00 pm Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party HENR19C p.43 U

4:00 pm Tab Hunter Confidential TABH20C p.27

4:00 pm Dyke Central Episodes 6-10 DYKE20V p.43 U

4:00 pm From This Day Forward FROM21C p.34

4:00 pm Alex & Ali ALEX21R p.53 D

4:00 pm Visible Silence VISI21V p.60 D

6:30 pm S&M Sally SMSA21R p.44 U

6:30 pm Baby Steps BABY21V p.47 W

t

4:00 pm A Woman Like Me WOMA20R p.61 D

D

6 PM

7 PM

8 PM

7:00 pm I Am Michael IAMM18C p.19 Q

7:00 pm Liz in September LIZI19C p.37

7:00 pm The Yes Men Are Revolting YESM19R p.61

9:30 pm Those People THOS19C p.39

9:30 pm Carmín Tropical CARM19R p.47 W

D

7:00 pm Naz & Maalik NAZA19V p.44 U

7:00 pm 7:00 pm How to Win at Game Face Checkers (Every Time) GAME20R HOWT20C p.35 p.56 D s

7:00 pm Portrait of a Serial Monogamist PORT20V p.50 W

9:30 pm Stuff STUF19V p.45 U

9:30 pm Mariposa MARI20C p.49 W

9:30 pm Two 4 One TWO420V p.51 W

9 PM

10 PM

11 PM

12 AM

10:00 pm Opening Night Gala at Terra Gallery GALA18 T p.19

10:00 pm Hidden Away HIDD18C p.48 W

9:30 pm While You Weren’t Looking WHIL20R p.52 W

9:00 pm 9:15 pm Floating!

Seed Money: The FLOA21R Chuck Holmes Story p.47 W SEED21C p.59 D

Wednesday June 24 Castro

Roxie

Victoria

Elmwood

6:30 pm That’s Not Us THAT21C p.45 U

9:15 pm Seashore SEAS21V p.50 W

Thursday June 25 Piedmont

Castro

Roxie

Victoria

Elmwood

Piedmont

11 AM

NOON

1 PM

2 PM

1:00 pm Querelle QUER24C p.41 t

1:30 pm Seashore SEAS25C p.50 W

3 PM

4 PM

5 PM

4:00 pm The Amina Profile AMIN24C p.53 D

4:00 pm Desert Migration DESE25C p.54 D

6 PM

7 PM

8 PM

6:30 pm Out to Win OUTT24C p.23 C s

7:00 pm Bi Candy BICA24R p.62 S

7:00 pm While You Weren’t Looking WHIL24V p.52 W

7:00 pm 7:00 pm El Canto del Colibrí All About E CANT24E p.54 D ALLA24P p.46 W

6:30 pm Eisenstein in Guanajuato EISE25C p.32

7:00 pm 7:00 pm Welcome To This House, To Russia with Love ...Elizabeth Bishop TORU25V WELC25R p.60 D p.60 D s

7:00 pm Game Face GAME25E p.56 D s

7:00 pm Visible Silence VISI25P p.60 D

9 PM

10 PM

11 PM

9:30 pm Summer Nights SUNI24C p.51 W

9:30 pm After Love AFTE24R p.46 W

9:15 pm Xenia XENI24V p.52 W

9:30 pm Sworn Virgin SWOR24E p.51 W

12 AM

P2 SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL LGBTQ FILM FESTIVAL

9:30 pm Dyke Central Episodes 6-10 DYKE24P p.43 U

9:15 pm Love Island LOVE25C p.49 W

9:15 pm Get Animated!

GETA25R p.64 S

9:30 pm Peter de Rome: Grandfather of Gay Porn PETE25V p.58 D

9:30 pm Two 4 One TWO425E p.51 W

9:15 pm The New Girlfriend NEWG25P p.50 W

Monday June 22 Castro

Roxie

Victoria

Tuesday June 23 Elmwood

Piedmont

Castro

Roxie

Victoria

Elmwood

Piedmont 11 AM

NOON

1 PM

1:30 pm Up Close & Personal UPCL22C p.66 S

1:30 pm The Year We Thought About Love YEAR23C p.61 D

4:15 pm Naz & Maalik NAZA22C p.44 U

4:00 pm Fassbinder — To Love Without Demands FASS23C p.55 D

2 PM

3 PM

4 PM

5 PM

6 PM

7:00 pm All About E ALLA22C p.46 W

7:00 pm Transtastic TRAN22R p.66 S

9:15 pm 9:30 pm Sworn Virgin Beautiful Something SWOR22R p.51 BEAU22C p.43 U

7:00 pm Scrum SCRU22V p.59

W

D

9:15 pm Only in San Francisco ONLY22V p.65

S

s

7:00 pm The Royal Road ROYA22E p.58 D

9:30 pm The Yes Men Are Revolting YESM22E p.61

7:00 pm Stories of Our Lives STOR22P p.38

7:00 pm Summer of Sangaile SUMM23C p.21 C

7:00 pm The Same Difference SAME23R p.59 D

7:00 pm In the Grayscale INTH23V p.48 W

7:00 pm 7:00 pm Welcome To This House, Realness & ...Elizabeth Bishop Revelations WELC23E p.60 D REAL23P p.65

7 PM

S

8 PM

9 PM

9:00 pm Liz in September LIZI22P p.37

9:30 pm Guidance GUID23C p.48 W

D

9:30 pm Alto ALTO23R p.42 U

9:30 pm Jason and Shirley JASO23V p.44 U

9:30 pm Love Island LOVE23E p.49 W

9:30 pm Margarita, with a Straw MARG23P p.49

10 PM W

11 PM

12 AM

Friday June 26 Castro 11:00 am Scrum SCRU26C p.59 D s

Roxie

Saturday June 27 Victoria

Castro 11:00 am Feelings Are Facts: The Life of Yvonne Rainer FEEL27C p.55 D

Roxie 11:00 am Score!

Queers in Sports SCOR27R p.65 S s

Victoria 11:00 am Reel in the Closet REEL27V p.58 D

Sunday June 28 Castro 11:00 am Fun in Girls Shorts FIGS28C p.63 S

11 AM

NOON

1 PM

1:30 pm Deep Run DEEP26C p.54

1:30 pm 1:30 pm Stories of Our Lives TBA1 STOR27C p.38 TBA127R

D

3:30 pm Larry Kramer in Love and Anger LARR27C p.36

4:00 pm Worldly Affairs WORL26C p.67 S

6:30 pm Fresno FRES26C p.33

9:00 pm 54: The Director’s Cut 54TH26C p.42 U

7:00 pm Realness & Revelations REAL26R p.65

9:30 pm Mind/Game MIND26R p.56

7:00 pm Hidden Away HIDD26V p.48 W

S

D

s

9:30 pm S&M Sally SMSA26V p.44 U

6:00 pm The Surface SURF27C p.45 U

8:30 pm Magic Mike XXL MAGI27C p.41 t

4:00 pm Finding Phong FIND27R p.56 D

1:30 pm Packed in a Trunk: Lost Art of Edith Wilkinson PACK27V p.57 D

1:30 pm Fun in Boys Shorts FIBS28C p.63 S

4:00 pm I Love Her, But ILOV27V p.64 S

4:00 pm In the Grayscale INTH28C p.48 W

Q = OPENING/CLOSING C = CENTERPIECE

s = SPOTLIGHT: SPORTS = SHOWCASE

2 PM

U

= US FEATURE

W

= WORLD CINEMA

D

= DOCUMENTARY

S

= SHORTS PROGRAM

F

= FAMILY PROGRAM

3 PM

4 PM

5 PM

6 PM

6:30 pm Margarita, with a Straw MARG27R p.49

6:30 pm TBA2 TBA227V W

9:00 pm Portrait of a Serial Monogamist PORT27R p.50 W

9:00 pm Xenia XENI27V p.52 W

7:00 pm Bare BARE28C p.25 Q

7 PM

t = SPECIAL PROGRAM 8 PM

9 PM

10:00 pm Closing Night Party at Oasis Nightclub p. 25

10 PM

11 PM

12 AM

frameline39 For more screening information, visit www.frameline.org

WWW.FRAMELINE.ORG P3

docs

A Woman Like Me

The Year We Thought About Love

The Yes Men Are Revolting

DIRS Alex Sichel & Elizabeth Giamatti 2015 USA 84 min

DIR Ellen Brodsky 2014 USA 68 min

DIRS Laura Nix & The Yes Men 2014 USA 92 min

After finding out she has terminal breast cancer, co-director Alex Sichel confronts this hard truth the only way she knows how: through her filmmaking. While she shoots the beautifully art-directed movie that had been playing in her head ever since her diagnosis — a narrative about her alter ego, Anna Seashell (a luminous Lili Taylor), who re- and pre-enacts Sichel’s own idealized journey to “dying in a compassionate way”—she documents the flipside of A Woman Like Me, a cinéma whose vérité is harrowing but also funny, magical, and meta. Medical appointments are driven to, needles pierce the skin, alternative healers “cure,” family members argue and grieve. Throughout, Sichel greets challenges in her frank and darkly humorous way, from the ridiculousness of swallowing barium to her struggle to meaningfully practice her Buddhist faith.

She is aglow with pluck, creative intensity, and a fierce sadness over the well-being of her husband and young daughter — but it is a glow that will abruptly be extinguished. We know it from the film’s opening seconds: a countdown leader that cuts to black. We are haunted by the fact that Sichel (whose brilliant 1997 directorial debut All Over Me was revisited at Frameline36) necessarily had a co-director in dear friend Elizabeth Giamatti, who accepted their SXSW Special Jury Recognition for Directing. Together they concocted a magnificent hybrid that weaves the real and the imagined, “truth” and performance, life and the desire to go joyfully toward death.

How do you perform love? Using personal experiences as inspiration, Boston LGBTQ youth troupe True Colors: Out Youth Theater produces a play that tackles this difficult topic. Ever the ones for drama, the troupe makes the bold decision to feature a surprising kiss in the first act — because what is a play without a little romance?

Director Ellen Brodsky highlights a diverse group of queer youth in the inspiring documentary The Year We Thought About Love. This film features a number of fascinating young people, including Alyssa, a star student on the model UN team who is forced to decide between transitioning and living at home; Giftson, a talented performer who wants to change the way fellow Haitians think about the LGBTQ community — that is, if he has any spare time after juggling work and family commitments; and Roxas, a teen who lives in a community plagued by gun violence but refuses to let that stop him from making it to school and rehearsals. These youth lean on one another while confronting a multitude of struggles, including the horrific 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. Amidst tragedy and hardships, these brave teenagers manage to produce an unforgettable play. This uplifting doc celebrates the powerful work of a troupe that believes, above all else, the show must go on!

Yes! The Yes Men are back! In their follow-up to The Yes Men (2003) and The Yes Men Fix the World (2009), legendary prankster protesters Mike Bonanno and Andy Bichlbaum (also known as Igor Vamos and Jacques Servin) team up once again with director Laura Nix (The Politics of Fur, Frameline26), to chronicle their latest activist antics. But after working together for more than 15 years to aggressively (and humorously) expose corporate greed and political malfeasance, the devilish dynamic duo is now grappling with a bit of a midlife crisis. Mike has a wife and two kids, Andy is settling in to what he hopes will be a long-term relationship with his new boyfriend, and their new priorities and responsibilities are starting to have a noticeable effect on their creative partnership. That does not, however, stop them from continuing to make trouble — and news.

As global warming becomes the critical focus of their work, they set their sights on the fossil fuel industry’s biggest government lobbyist: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. That effort leads to their first major lawsuit and several other key actions (some successful, some a little less so) that take them to Uganda, Canada, and the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. But along the way, they find themselves starting to question the true value and impact of their activism: Is their work really helping to change the world? Watching this film is one way to make sure it does.

— LUCY LAIRD

— TAYLOR HODGES

PRECEDED BY:

Kumu Hina: A Place in the Middle dirs

— JOANNE PARSONT

Dean Hamer & Joe Wilson 2014 USA 25 min

This short is the true story of a young Hawaiian girl who aspires to become the leader of her school’s all-male hula troupe, and an inspiring teacher who uses traditional culture to empower her.

Friday, June 19, 7:00 pm · Roxie $10 members, $12 general · YESM19R

Saturday, June 20, 4:00 pm · Roxie $8 members, $10 general · WOMA20R

Tuesday, June 23, 1:30 pm · Castro $8 members, $10 general · YEAR23C

Monday, June 22, 9:30 pm · Elmwood $10 members, $12 general · YESM22E sponsored by

Proudly underwritten by the

Wells Fargo Foundation

WWW.FRAMELINE.ORG 61

Bi Candy

Broads to Watch Out For!

Star-crossed, cross-dressing, and boundary-crossing lovers collide in these binary-shattering films that are sure to delight even the most diverse cinephile palettes.

Shakespeare has neither been so tragic nor so gay as in Still A Rose, the very inclusive take on Romeo and Juliet. Identity doesn’t break down into a neat pie chart in the autobiographical 50%. Separate, Together offers a window into young fluid love — San Francisco style, while high-school comedy Out Again shows that coming out isn’t easy the first time, or the second, or the....

In Whatever We Want To Be two free spirits have met their match, but does that mean they will change their ways? In Siren the pursued becomes the pursuer with a little help from James Dean, and a snow-drenched small town heats up when two siblings move in and meet local tomboy Stevie.

Sex, love, and activism collide in this brassy program honoring the tough broads who paved the way for strong queer women to come! Tough dykes, WWII vets, Olympic champions, insatiable activist-organizers, randy retirees, and fierce mamis make for a truly ripe (and ready) shorts collection. Tenacious Dorothy, who kicked ass and took names, gives 11 Life Lessons from an Awesome Old Dyke. A World War II vet tells her story of living as a transwoman since 1976 in Flying Solo.

Growing up poor, Chicana, and a lesbian in the mid20th century, Nancy Valverde developed a defiance that has garnered her legendary status as Nancy from East Side Clover. In 1932 Stella Walsh was an Olympic champion sprinter. Decades later she was killed in a robbery, and her “ambiguous gender” was discovered.

Protests, potlucks, and three-ways are just the ‘tip of the rice bowl’ for five Asian American lesbians discussing Sex, Politics & Sticky Rice. A group of older lesbians watches tempers rise between a couple on the tennis court in Playing with Balls. In Cuba, lesbians who want to be mothers face extra challenges trying to realize their dreams, but Mamis reveals that there is often a way around the rules.

— CURATED BY ALLEGRA AND APRIL HIRSCHMAN

STILL A ROSE dir Hazart 2015 USA 13 min WHATEVER WE WANT TO BE dir Stephanie Williams 2014 USA 14 min SEPARATE, TOGETHER dir Amanda Vigil 2015 USA 8 min OUT AGAIN dirs Greg Chu, Emma McKittrich & Tai Payne 2014 USA 5 min SIREN dir Louise Cooke 2014 United Kingdom 14 min 50% dir Alexandra Herstik 2015 USA 5 min STEVIE dir Chloe Jury-Fogel 2014 USA 18 min total running time :

77 min

— DESIREE BUFORD

11 LIFE LESSONS FROM AN AWESOME OLD DYKE dir Allison Khoury 2015 USA 8 min FLYING SOLO: A TRANSGENDER WIDOW FIGHTS DISCRIMINATION dir Leslie Von Pless 2014 USA 8 min NANCY FROM EAST SIDE CLOVER dir Gregorio Davila 2014 USA 9 min STELLA WALSH dir Rob Lucas 2014 USA 15 min SEX, POLITICS, & STICKY RICE dir Tina Takemoto 2014 USA 8 min PLAYING WITH BALLS dir Nanna Kristín Magnúsdóttir 2014 Iceland 8 min MAMIS: A FAMILY PORTRAIT dir Virgina Fuentes 2013 Cuba, UK, Spain 19 min total running time :

Wednesday, June 24, 7:00 pm · Roxie $10 members, $12 general · BICA24R

Sunday, June 21, 1:30 pm · Victoria $8 members, $10 general · BROA21V sponsored by

62 SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL LGBTQ FILM FESTIVAL

75 min

shorts

Coming Up Queer

Fun in Boys Shorts

Admission-free screening!

Growing up is the same as it ever was. It’s all about the friends you make, your first love, and discovering your true self during a tumultuous time. From a young transgender girl at her first sleepover to a camp dedicated to building LGBTQ community in the South, this youth oriented shorts collection features five perspectives on what it means to be coming up in the world as a queer person today. Being the new girl at school is hard enough. For Sammy, it’s even tougher, as she struggles with whether or not to tell her new BFFs her deepest secret — that she was born male — in Stealth, a polished, fresh take on growing up transgender. Boy meets boy at tryouts for the school play in Noam, a sweet tale of first love and coming out...as an actor.

Frameline favorite Kai Stänicke returns with Golden, a fast-paced tale about feeling out of place but discovering your home in a shimmering community. When Alex befriends the beautiful, stylish, and popular Charlotte, more than a friendship begins to emerge. And at QORDS Camp, a hodgepodge of Southern teens comes together for a summer of building queer community through music and artistic expression in this feel-good short documentary.

— ALEXIS WHITHAM

STEALTH dir Bennett Lasseter 2014 USA 21 min NOAM dir Boaz Foster 2015 Israel 15 min CHARLOTTE dir Angel Kristi Williams 2015 USA 11 min GOLDEN dir Kai Stänicke 2015 Germany 3 min QORDS CAMP dirs Rick Dillwood & Carrie Hart 2014 USA 24 min total running time :

74 min

Fun in Girls Shorts

Need a lift? Check your troubles at the door and join the laugh-fest at Frameline’s annual celebration of upbeat, downright funny gay flicks. Our frisky octet is promiscuous when it comes to genre — you’ll find twisted takes on animation and documentary, an after-school special, and, inevitably, a beauty pageant backstage melodrama. Pop-Up Porno: m4m recounts a hilarious hook-up disaster through brilliantly realized paper pop-ups. Next, Oscar and Sergio’s comfy five-year partnership heads into choppy waters when one of them floats an Open Relationship. In The Little Deputy, Trevor the filmmaker returns home to retake a problematic childhood portrait with his father, while Hank the handyman finds that taking things apart is cathartic in Tradesman’s Exit. A little boy who loves dresses has until midnight to live out a fantasy granted by his “Fairy Drag Mama,” and a landlady’s erratic voicemails form the New York audio diary of One Year Lease.

In Pipe Dream, the teenage son of two daddies worries about his, er, endowment, while in Mini Supreme, after losing his dead-end job, Jeremie wants to follow his own dream: entering a little girls’ beauty pageant. The pageant moms are not amused.

— PETER L. STEIN

POP-UP PORNO: M4M dir Stephen Dunn 2015 Canada 3 min OPEN RELATIONSHIP dir Carlos Ocho 2014 Spain 14 min THE LITTLE DEPUTY dir Trevor Anderson 2015 USA 8 min TRADESMAN’S EXIT dir Tom E. Brown 2015 USA 12 min DRAG MAMA dir Benjamin Strum 2014 Australia 7 min ONE YEAR LEASE dir Brian Bolster 2014 USA 11 min PIPE DREAM dir Yudho Aditya 2015 Indonesia 15 min MINI SUPREME dir Michael Phlllis 2015 USA 9 min total running time :

79 min

Pin-up dream girls, misadventures in therapy, and “dating 3.0” make up this sexy, grin-inducing collection of queer women’s shorts! An 8-year-old believes her new teacher is the woman from her dad’s pin-up magazine in Carina. Two women in search of relationship help visit a new therapist for their First Session.

A tough-as-nails butch gives an abridged history lesson in 11 Life Lessons from an Awesome Old Dyke.

Playing with the tropes of the 2013 Palme d’Or winner, V is the Warmest Color retells the tale starring a vagina.

A one-night stand refuses to leave in Be Here Nowish.

Sugarhiccup shows how nonsensical data and social media can lead to questionable decision-making. Dylan rethinks her free-spirited, poly lifestyle when she meets seductive Sam in Whatever We Want to Be. Tempers rise between a couple on the tennis court, piquing the interest of some older lesbians in Playing with Balls.

Nisha Ganatra (Chutney Popcorn, Frameline23) returns with Code Academy, a futuristic short about adolescence, gender identity, and cyberspace.

— DESIREE BUFORD

CARINA dir Sandra Concepcion Reynoso Estrada 2014 Mexico 11 min THE FIRST SESSION dir Ryan Logan 2015 USA 6 min 11 LIFE LESSONS FROM AN AWESOME OLD DYKE dir Allison Khoury 2015 USA 8 min V IS THE WARMEST COLOR dir Anna Margarita Albelo 2015 USA 2 min BE HERE NOWISH: EPISODE 2 dirs Natalia Leite & Alexandra Roxo 2014 USA 6 min SUGARHICCUP dir Lisa Donato 2014 USA 16 min WHATEVER WE WANT TO BE dir Stephanie Williams 2014 USA 14 min PLAYING WITH BALLS dir Nanna Kristín Magnúsdóttir 2014 Iceland 8 min CODE ACADEMY dir Nisha Ganatra 2014 USA 16 min total running time :

Saturday, June 20, 11:00 am · Castro

Saturday, June 20, 1:30 pm · Castro

Sunday, June 28, 1:30 pm · Castro

Sunday, June 28, 11:00 am · Castro

sponsored by

sponsored by

$8 members, $10 general · FIBS20C

Sunday, June 21, 1:30 pm · Roxie Free · COMI21R

87 min

$8 members, $10 general · FIBS28C

$8 members, $10 general · FIGS20C $8 members, $10 general · FIGS28C

WWW.FRAMELINE.ORG 63

shorts

Get Animated!

Homegrown

I Love Her, But

Leave the kids at home for this queerly adult-oriented animated ride. Two couples go out on the town in the subversive, revisionist, 1930s-cartoon misadventure Happy & Gay. A cherub manipulatively reunites a couple in Heavenly Peace. An ensemble of irreverent teen foods navigate sexuality and gender identity in McTucky Fried High. The accidental reveal of a burlesque dancer’s identity leads to audience self-questioning in Mindtease. When one man takes a closer look, he discovers his beauty in Dancer & the Crow. Deconstruction of the Orpheus myth creates a visual poem in (Orpheus) The Poetics of Finitude. Two girl bunnies meet on a block of ice in space and become romantically smitten in The Girl Bunnies. ROCKETSHIP. 100 Crushes Chapter 6: They uses claymation to explain a roommate’s pronoun-of-choice. The horror/magical realist Paper Thin subverts psychiatry and religious fundamentalism. A lovable, heartbroken alien puppet transitions into adult life in Myrna the Monster, and a closeted man delivers a full drag tribute to his lost love in Lady of the Night.

In this program of short films from around the San Francisco Bay Area we’ll meet drag nuns, AIDS activists, a badass female football player, and more inspiring folks. See how an order of drag queen nuns saved the Russian River and turned homophobes into heroes in Queer Habits. An African American man with Down syndrome comes out as gay and finds support from his drag queen idols in Supernature. Message for the Future: Stories from the AIDS Frontlines speaks to future generations about HIV/AIDS from the experiences of people in the early days of the epidemic to today. In The Album, former SF-based director Raymond Rea examines the role of photography in documenting history, inspired by rare photos from his Great Uncle Warren, a pre-Stonewall gay man. Sachet gives a glimpse beyond the public image and into the private life of SF’s very own Donna Sachet, a well-known drag performer who has worked tirelessly for countless philanthropic causes. In Breakaway we meet Jennifer Deering, a professional football player who got a chance to represent the USA at the 2013 IFAF Women’s World Championship. A gay Korean War veteran reflects on his time as the office clerk tasked with writing the discharges of outed gay seamen in The Typist.

Love is everywhere — frivolous, inappropriate, unrequited, and almost always life altering — but often not so easy to find or to keep. Hitch a ride around the globe on this exploration of women who love women — featuring titles from Iran, Ukraine, Mexico, Germany, Canada, and USA. A glowing heartbeat takes on an active role in Beat, the delightful story of blossoming love for a young recluse. Threesomes are obviously not for everyone as jealousies abound in the sexy French-Canadian Pepper.

And at times Actresses can be self-involved and also fall in love — love sprinkled with constructive criticism.

In Roads, adventurous and free-spirited Abril comes across quiet Carmela in the countryside of Mexico, inspiring a change for both of them. Audible explores possibilities of love hidden in the shadows in Iran. Blood and Water finds lust awash in neon on the streets of NYC’s dive bars, as a young student falls for her professor. Young Taiwanese-German immigrants Ron and May show that love can persist under the gray skies of Berlin in The Birthday. Finally, love knows no boun­ daries in I Love Her, as a songstress takes to the streets and sings despite the stifling climate within Ukraine.

— KEVIN SCHAUB

HAPPY & GAY dir Lorelei Pepi 2014 Canada 11 min HEAVENLY PEACE dir Andreas Wessel-Therhorn 2014 USA 5 min MCTUCKY FRIED HIGH dir Robert Carnilius 2015 USA 4 min MINDTEASE dir Iris Moore 2013 Canada 4 min DANCER & THE CROW dir Iris Moore 2014 Canada 4 min (ORPHEUS) THE POETICS OF FINITUDE dir Rudy Lemcke 2014 USA 7 min THE GIRL BUNNIES. ROCKETSHIP dir Françoise Doherty 2015 Canada 9 min 100 CRUSHES CHAPTER 6: THEY dir Elisha Lim 2014 Canada 2 min PAPER THIN dir Nataly Lebouleux 2014 UK 19 min MYRNA THE MONSTER dir Ian Samuels 2014 USA 14 min LADY OF THE NIGHT dir Mikhal Bak 2014 France 11 min total running time :

90 min

Thursday, June 25, 9:15 pm · Roxie $10 members, $12 general · GETA25R

— KEVIN SCHAUB

QUEER HABITS dir Drew Denny 2015 USA 13 min SUPERNATURE dirs Kittie Krivacic, Jessica Vo & Alan Pham 2014 USA 7 min A MESSAGE FOR THE FUTURE: STORIES FROM THE AIDS FRONTLINES dir Avidan Novogrodsky-Godt 2014 USA 6 min THE ALBUM dir Ray Rea 2014 USA 14 min SACHET dir Nicholas Jimenez 2014 USA 19 min BREAKAWAY dir Ari N Ali 2014 USA 9 min THE TYPIST dir Kristine Stolakis 2014 USA 7 min total running time :

— FRANCES WALLACE

BEAT dir Tricia Hagoriles 2015 Canada 15 min PEPPER dir Patrick Aubert 2014 Canada 7 min ACTRESSES dir Jeremy Hersh 2014 USA 11 min ROADS dir Denisse Quintero 2013 Mexico 10 min AUDIBLE dir Ehsan Mansouri 2014 Iran 14 min BLOOD AND WATER dir Emily Iason 2014 USA 12 min THE BIRTHDAY dir Daniela Lucato 2014 Germany, Taiwan 16 min I LOVE HER dir Darya Perelay 2013 Ukraine 4 min total running time :

87 min

75 min

Sunday, June 21, 11:00 am · Victoria

Saturday, June 27, 4:00 pm · Victoria

sponsored by

sponsored by

$8 members, $10 general · HOME21V

64 SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL LGBTQ FILM FESTIVAL

$8 members, $10 general · ILOV27V

shorts

Only in San Francisco

Realness & Revelations

This shorts series ranges from sublime and sweet to subversively campy, then heads to way-beyond-overthe-top. In other words: Only in San Francisco (and around the Bay). We start off with Beautiful by Night, an exploration of the rituals of transformation by three older drag entertainers at Aunt Charlie’s Lounge in the Tenderloin. Heading to Guerneville, an order of drag queen nuns saves the Russian River and turns homophobes into heroes in Queer Habits. A weddingobsessed woman is hoping for a proposal, but instead finds out her boyfriend is gay in I Don’t. Hank goes to extreme lengths to get closure after a recent breakup in Tradesman’s Exit. Peaches Christ, Chaka Corn, and Honey Mahogany lend their voices in Engender, a short doc that looks at drag culture as an inherently progressive force. Peaches Christ takes a turn in the director’s chair for Cherry Bomb, an over-the-top, grossly goofball short starring Peggy L’Eggs as a starlet who is rapidly losing her grip — and bodily fluids. Perky and portly Cousin Wonderlette never imagined she’d meet the man of her dreams, so when her dreams turn into disturbing nightmares she’s not so surprised in the demented My Life Is a Dream.

These electrifying shorts celebrate an array of voices of queer and trans folks of color. From tomboys playing house, to old butch barbers with swag, to WWB as a transman, to the fierce quest for queer fat femme-topia, these films feature QTPOC folks fostering connections and speaking truths to power. Alex confronts her curiosity about Charlotte, the popular girl at school, and discovers an unexpected closeness. At age 83, Nancy’s defiance and resilience to maintain her identity as a Chicana butch lesbian has garnered her legendary status as Nancy from East Side Clover. In No No, Homo two boys sit alone at a matinee together, with a big, mouthwatering bucket of popcorn. Fiercely honest, ABSENCE is a quest — for community, for visibility, for that queer fat API femme utopia. A story about loss of connection, Tough asks: What does it really mean to be tough and also accepted for who you really are? Beautifully shot and amplified with magical realism, Beat finds a shy illustrator ignited by a mysterious bike courier.

A Shameless woman on trial turns the tables on her accusers. “Passing” explores what life is like living as a black man, when no one knows you are transgender.

— DESIREE BUFORD

— KEVIN SCHAUB

BEAUTIFUL BY NIGHT dir James Hosking 2014 USA 28 min QUEER HABITS dir Drew Denny 2015 USA 13 min I DON’T dir Matthew Riutta 2015 USA 11 min TRADESMAN’S EXIT dir Tom E. Brown 2015 USA 12 min ENGENDER dir Edward Wright 2015 USA 13 min CHERRY BOMB dir Joshua Grannell 2015 USA 3 min MY LIFE IS A DREAM dir Brian Benson 2015 USA 8 min total running time :

88 min

Score!

Queers in Sports

SPlTLIGHT SPORTS

Uniquely queer takes on tennis, track and field, soccer, basketball, and even women’s arm wrestling are all packed into this shorts program. In Queens at Court, four diverse players who compete in US Tennis Association competitive leagues, the Gay Games, and an LGBTQ international tour, share stories of how tennis changed their lives. Dutch high schoolers David and Niels are best friends who run track together, but when one is outed and ostracized, the other must decide whether he sides with the bullies or joins his friend in solidarity in Caged.

A homophobic soccer coach tries to force his top player to leave the team in Laundry Mood. Fender Bender, a women/trans/queer bike workshop collective in Detroit, builds community one bike at a time in True Wheel. In Gold Star, two basketball players confront their strained relationship in a game of one-on-one. Follow Cookie and Foxy Ven in their quest to reach the arm-wrestling finals and judge for yourself the standards of Dapper wear in Female Masculinity Appreciation Society. In Stella Walsh, the gold-medal-winning Olympic athlete had worldwide popularity for decades with medals, ribbons, and honors — until she was killed in a robbery and it was discovered that she had an “ambiguous gender.”

CHARLOTTE dir Angel Kristi Williams 2015 USA 11 min NANCY FROM EAST SIDE CLOVER dir Gregorio Davila 2014 USA 9 min NO NO, HOMO dir Jerell Rosales 2014 USA 3 min ABSENCE: NO FATS, NO FEMMES, NO ASIANS dir Celeste Chan 2014 USA 7 min TOUGH dir Alfonso Johnson 2015 USA 11 min BEAT dir Tricia Hagoriles 2015 Canada 15 min SHAMELESS dir Geeta Malik 2013 USA 4 min “PASSING” dirs J. Mitchel Reed & Lucah Rosenberg-Lee 2015 Canada 22 min

QUEENS AT COURT dir Shiv Paul 2013 USA 21 min CAGED dirs Lazlo & Dylan Tonk 2013 Netherlands 13 min LAUNDRY MOOD dir Sebastian Jansen 2014 Germany 5 min TRUE WHEEL dir Nora Mandray 2014 France, USA 9 min GOLD STAR dir Igor Yankilevich 2014 USA 7 min FEMALE MASCULINITY APPRECIATION SOCIETY dirs Jac Nunns & Angie West 2014 UK 11 min STELLA WALSH dir Rob Lucas 2014 USA 15 min

total running time :

total running time :

82 min

— KEVIN SCHAUB

82 min

Tuesday, June 23, 7:00 pm · Piedmont $10 members, $12 general · REAL23P

Monday, June 22, 9:15 pm · Victoria $10 members, $12 general · ONLY22V sponsored by

Friday, June 26, 7:00 pm · Roxie $10 members, $12 general · REAL26R

Saturday, June 27, 11:00 am · Roxie $8 members, $10 general · SCOR27R sponsored by

WWW.FRAMELINE.ORG 65

shorts

Thirst & Desire

Transtastic

Up Close & Personal

Some urges are too strong to resist, even when they’re leading you toward desperate acts and regrettable predicaments. The films in this powerful collection introduce us to characters whose longings — emotional, physical, spiritual — push them to unexpected places.

In Followers, a gay African man in Wales finds himself the object of uncomfortable attention from an elderly church-going lady who sees something remarkable in the bump of his swimsuit. In 1990s Mexico, little Arturo is being bullied as a F*ggot for girlish ways he can’t help; his fantasy life helps him connect with his handsome uncle, coping himself with HIV and intolerance. Billy, a disabled gay man battling loneliness and unquenchable desire, has only his home health worker Craig to turn to, in the brave and unforgettable Hole. It’s the 22nd century and a time traveler is assigned against his will to return to 1968 to thwart a nascent virus; his insistent supervisor (Zachary Quinto) has deep personal reasons for sending him back to create The Future Perfect. On an intense desert hike, two buddies get hot and bothered when one of them pushes the friendship to a new level, in Thirst. Finally, Julian’s surly dad thinks he’s at soccer practice, but the teenager is compelled to perform in drag in the gritty and gripping Showboy.

This affirming collection puts representations of transgender and genderqueer folks front and center. From poetic images of empowered free-floating bodies, to a WWII vet staking her claim, to brown transmen speaking truth to power these shorts celebrate the vast richness of embracing one’s authentic self. A stunningly artistic film, Float is shot completely underwater as trans and genderqueer folks swim naked, featuring the music of trans musician Rae Spoon. At 92, Robina Asti, a World War II veteran and pilot, tells her story of living as a transgender woman since 1976 in Flying Solo. When a new neighbor moves into the building a beautiful friendship blossoms in Under the Last Roof. Profiling the lives of three transmen of color, “Passing” explores what life is like living as a black man, when no one knows you are transgender. Filmmaker Elisha Lim lyrically recounts finding liberation from the gender binary in 100 Crushes Chapter 6: They. In Ma/ddy a gender-queer widow overcomes obstacles to create the family she’s always wanted. At her new school living in Stealth, trans tween Sammy finds the friends she’s always dreamed of having until a threat of a betrayal arises, and she must decide whether to run or to live as her whole self.

These shorts profile a diverse group of inspiring, bold, and incredibly brave LGBTQ people and their personal stories. One Year Lease documents the travails of tenants enduring a yearlong sentence with Rita their cat-loving landlady. Andrew, a man with cerebral palsy and an indomitable spirit, reflects on his first sexual encounter in Bedding Andrew. Three performers — a Korean American drag queen, a Chinese opera singer who plays male roles, and a mime — talk about their relationship to art in the docu-narrative Glow. A young black artist looks at his choices and how they might impact the rest of his life in Give Him Something Red. In May 1988, girlfriends Claudia Brenner and Rebecca Wight were attacked while hiking the Appalachian Trail. Years later, Claudia returns to the trail In the Hollow. Elise is a gorgeously shot short about a young black transgirl and the challenges she faces on a daily basis. In Tomgirl we meet Jake, a gender non-conforming 7-year-old with incredibly supportive parents who let their child be the amazing person they are, not who gender-normative society would like them to be.

— PETER L. STEIN

FOLLOWERS dir Tim Marshall 2014 UK 13 min F*GGOT dir Mariana Sobrino 2014 Mexico 18 min HOLE dir Martin Edrain 2014 Canada 15 min THE FUTURE PERFECT dir Nicolas Citton 2014 USA 13 min THIRST dir Guy Sahaf 2014 Israel 14 min SHOWBOY dir Samuel Leighton-Dore 2013 Australia 15 min total running time :

88 min

— DESIREE BUFORD

FLOAT dir Sam Berliner 2015 USA 5 min FLYING SOLO: A TRANSGENDER WIDOW FIGHTS DISCRIMINATION dir Leslie Von Pless 2014 USA 8 min UNDER THE LAST ROOF dir Edgar A. Romero 2013 Mexico 12 min “PASSING” dirs J. Mitchel Reed & Lucah Rosenberg-Lee 2015 Canada 22 min 100 CRUSHES CHAPTER 6: THEY dir Elisha Lim 2014 Canada 2 min MA/DDY dir Devon Kirkpatrick 2014 USA 11 min STEALTH dir Bennett Lasseter 2014 USA 21 min total running time :

Friday, June 19, 1:30 pm · Castro $8 members, $10 general · THIR19C

$10 members, $12 general · TRAN22R

66 SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL LGBTQ FILM FESTIVAL

ONE YEAR LEASE dir Brian Bolster 2014 USA 11 min BEDDING ANDREW dir Blair Fukumura 2014 Canada 5 min GLOW dir Jun Lam 2014 USA 18 min GIVE HIM SOMETHING RED dir Greg Accetta 2015 USA 4 min IN THE HOLLOW dir Austin Lee Bunn 2015 USA 14 min ELISE dirs Jo Bradlee & Evan Sterrett 2014 USA 12 min TOMGIRL dir Stephen Przybylowski 2014 USA 14 min total running time :

78 min

81 min

Monday, June 22, 7:00 pm · Roxie

sponsored by

— KEVIN SCHAUB

Monday, June 22, 1:30 pm · Castro $8 members, $10 general · UPCL22C sponsored by

family

Worldly Affairs

Akeelah and the Bee

Un amor espléndido could be the sultry subtitle for this special Latin edition of Frameline’s annual excursion into international love and romance. The four short narratives in this sexy program find men from Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, and Chile in various states of arrival and departure that crank up the emotional — and erotic — tension for each pair. In Trémulo, on the eve of Mexican Independence Day, a young barbershop assistant is smitten when he locks eyes with a new army recruit, who stops by for a trim before he must deploy.

It’s also the eve of departure for Sebastian, who is about to return to Argentina after a week-long holiday in snowy Toronto, where his unexpected connection with a local fellow, Alex, has them both wondering what these last 10 minutes together should mean. In sunshiny Rio de Janeiro, Junior is planning to delight his long-term boyfriend with a marriage proposal and has planned an elaborate surprise; but things don’t go quite as planned in the funny and charming I Do. Finally, on an island off the coast of southern Chile, Lucas is paying a visit to his sister before moving abroad, when he encounters a local young fisherman, Antonio. The spark between them is unmistakable, even to suspicious locals. Charting a course through rocky waters is the challenge for the soulful lovers of San Cristobal.

DIR Doug Atchison 2006 USA 112 mins

— PETER L. STEIN

TRÉMULO dir Roberto Fiesco 2015 Mexico 20 min SEBASTIAN dir Rickey Bryant 2014 Canada 9 min I DO dir Felipe Cabral 2014 Brazil 20 min SAN CRISTOBAL dir Omar Zúñiga Hidalgo 2015 Chile 28 min total running time :

Admission-Free Screening!

Eleven-year-old Akeelah Anderson (Keke Palmer) has a way with words — a way to spell them, to be precise. With an obsession for Scrabble and complicated vocabulary words that was instilled in her by her now deceased father, Akeelah has a linguistic talent that’s pretty unique for a middle schooler in South Central Los Angeles. But being a “brainiac” is something kids in her school get bullied, not applauded, for. Her overworked and overstressed mother Tanya (Angela Bassett) has no patience for Akeelah’s extracurricular spelling activities. However, Akeelah’s school principal recognizes her potential and is determined to get her to the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C., with the help of a UCLA English professor — and former spelling bee competitor — named Dr. Joshua Larabee (Laurence Fishburne). After a slightly rocky start, Dr. Larabee agrees to be her coach, taking her from local to district to regional spelling bees, in pursuit of the ultimate national title (against some intense competition).

The obstacles to that pinnacle of spelling success are numerous, but Akeelah’s fierce determination is a force powerful enough to transcend socioeconomic class and inspire an entire community. For Akeelah, the most important thing she must learn is not how to spell pulchritude or xanthosis but that the help she needs to fulfill her dream lies not just inside herself but all around her.

— JOANNE PARSONT

77 min

Friday, June 26, 4:00 pm · Castro $8 members, $10 general · WORL26C

Sunday, June 21, 10:30 am · Roxie Free · AKEE21R

sponsored by

WWW.FRAMELINE.ORG 67

PROUD HOME OF FRAMELINE THE SAN FRANCISCO LGBT FILM FESTIVAL FOR 34 YEARS

429 Castro Street, San Francisco • castrotheatre.com

ticket info how to buy tickets

ticket prices Regular Screening General Public $12.00 Discount $10.00 Matinee SCREENINGS UP TO AND INCLUDING 5:00 PM

General Public $10.00 Discount $8.00 Centerpiece Films General Public $15.00 Discount $12.00 Opening Night Film and Gala General Public $90.00 Discount $75.00 Opening Night Gala Only General Public $60.00 Discount $45.00 Opening Night Film Only General Public $35.00 Discount $30.00 Closing Night Film and Party General Public $60.00 Discount $50.00

Advance member ticket sales start Friday, May 22.

General ticket sales start Friday, May 29.

Online

Daily, 24 hours at www.frameline.org

Walk-up Daily,* 1:00 pm to 7:00 pm at the Frameline39 Box Office, presented by Showtime®, located in The HRC Action Center and Store 575 Castro Street (between 18th & 19th Streets) *Closed Monday, May 25 Fax

Daily, 24 hours at 415.861.1404

DAY-OF-SHOW TICKETS: Only available for purchase at the appropriate theater’s box office beginning a minimum of thirty minutes prior to the first screening of the day.

Discounts not available. Cash only.

DOWNLOAD ORDER FORMS at www.frameline.org.

NOTE: Discounts are not available day of show.

Frameline Members: When ordering, you must present your membership card or have your I.D. available. Limited to two discount tickets per screening (available online).

Students/Youth (21 & under) & Disabled/Seniors (55+): When ordering, you must present a valid photo ID (proof of discount eligibility). Send a photocopy of your ID with your Ticket Order Form when ordering by fax. Limited to one discount ticket per screening. Discount not available online.

Streamline your Frameline39 experience with a Castro Pass or as a member with a Gold Card. Skip the box office lines, ditch individual tickets, get priority entry, and enjoy the flexibility to decide each day which movies you’ll see. Daytime moviegoers will want to nab a Weekday Matinee pass!

Gold Card: This pass is presented in appreciation of Frameline members at the Benefactor ($725) and Visionary ($1500) levels. Entitles bearer priority admission (subject to house manager discretion) to all Frameline39 screenings including Opening and Closing Night Films and Galas.

Present this pass at the Gold Card Door for admission.

Gold Card bearer may be accompanied at the Gold Card Door

by ONE guest with a valid ticket or pass.

Gold Cards are not sold separately. To become a Benefactor or Visionary member, please go to www.frameline.org, contact our Development Depart­ment at membership@frameline.org, call us at 415.703.8650 x 301 or visit the Frameline Box Office inside the HRC Action Center and Store, 575 Castro Street.

Castro Pass: $225 each. This pass entitles bearer admission

PAYMENT: Visa, MasterCard, and American Express are accepted. Personal checks and money orders are also accepted on walk-up orders only. Cash only on day-of-show tickets.

to all Frameline39 screenings at the Castro Theatre, excluding Opening and Closing Nights. Present this pass at the Members Door for admission. Castro Pass bearer may be accompanied at the Members Door by ONE guest with a valid ticket.

TICKET DELIVERY VIA MAIL: Tickets/passes purchased online or by fax before June 8 will automatically be mailed within three business days to the billing address listed on the ticket order. Please email boxoffice @ frameline.org if you would like your tickets held at Will Call or mailed to an alternate address. NOTE: Orders received on or after June 8 will automatically be placed at Will Call.

Weekday Matinee Pass: $35 Members/$40 General Public.

Closing Night Film Only General Public $35.00 WILL CALL: Tickets held at Will Call will be available at the Discount $30.00

discounts

passes

theater of the ticket order’s first screening ONLY on the day of that screening. Will Call will open thirty minutes prior to the first screening of the day at each venue. If you miss the first screening for which you have Will Call tickets, we’ll hold your tickets at the theater where your next screening is taking place (and so on). Only those people listed on the ticket order will be allowed to pick up Will Call tickets.

Please bring a valid photo ID so our Will Call volunteers can make sure you get the proper tickets.

SOLD OUT? You might still get in! When advance tickets are no longer available, a separate Rush Line will form outside the venue, anywhere from 15 minutes to one hour prior to the screening. As soon as the number of unoccupied seats has been determined, typically a few minutes before showtime, those tickets will be sold to individuals in the Rush Line.

THE FINE PRINT: All orders are final. No refunds, exchanges, substitutions, or replacements. Frameline is not responsible for lost, stolen, forgotten, or damaged tickets or passes, or any item misdirected by the Post Office. If a screening is cancelled, tickets must be returned to the Frameline Box Office within 48 hours of the cancelled screening date. Service fees are non-refundable. The service fee is $2.00 per ticket or pass, up to a maximum fee of $8.00 per order. Returned checks are subject to a $25.00 fee.

Frameline Box Office location is generously provided by HRC (Human Rights Campaign).

70 SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL LGBTQ FILM FESTIVAL

Spend your weekday afternoons in the luxury of the Castro Theatre, where many of the Festival’s hidden treasures screen Monday through Friday before 5:00 pm. With more than a dozen programs to see, you’ll save plenty purchasing a pass instead of individual tickets.

Pass holders gain admission to all Frameline39 weekday matinee screenings at the Castro Theatre. The Weekday Matinee Pass is not valid for Castro weekday screenings starting after 5:00 pm, all Castro weekend screenings or screenings at other venues. Matinee Pass holders may be accompanied at the Members Door by ONE guest with a valid ticket.

connect!

WEBSITE:

frameline.org

BOX OFFICE:

boxoffice@frameline.org

FESTIVAL HOTLINE:

415.703.8655

facebook.com/frameline twitter.com/framelinefest instagram.com/framelinefest

frameline39 TICKET ORDER FORM QUESTIONS? PLEASE CONTACT BOXOFFICE@FRAMELINE.ORG | PLEASE PRINT LEGIBLY OR PROCESSING MAY BE DELAYED. | FAX TO FRAMELINE AT 415.861.1404.

PLEASE CHECK ALL THAT APPLY I am a Frameline Member.

Name

I am joining Frameline, and my membership payment is included.

Billing Address

CREDIT CARD PAYMENT City State

Visa

MasterCard

Zip/Postal Code

Country (other than USA)

Authorized Signature

( ) Home Phone

( ) Day Phone (important)

Name (as it appears on credit card)

American Express

/ Expiration Date

Account No.

Email Address

PROGRAM CODE DATE PROGRAM TITLE QUANTITY

PRICE PER TICKET

DISCOUNT TYPE*

@ =$

@ =$

@ =$

@ =$

@ =$

@ =$

@ =$

@ =$

@ =$

@ =$

@ =$

@ =$

SUBTOTAL * DISCOUNT TYPES M = Member D = Disabled S = Senior (55+) ST = Student Y = Youth (21-)

Membership (SEE BELOW LEFT) @ $ Please enclose proof of age or student status.

SUBTOTAL

=$ =$

Castro Pass

@ $225.00

=$

Weekday Matinee Pass

@ $35.00 / $40.00

=$

($2.00 per ticket, up to $8.00 maximum; not charged if membership payment only,

and not charged for purchases made at the Frameline Box Office).

Join Frameline/Renew Membership One-time Additional Donation

Service Fee = $ Donation = $

Please make a special gift to support the future of queer film.

Visit www.frameline.org/membership for a complete list of member benefits, including advance member ticket sales beginning on May 22, 2015.

Basic. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $50

Benefactor. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $725

Basic Discount..**. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $35

Visionary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $1,500

Dual Basic. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $95

Visionary Star.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $2,500

Supporter. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $175

Visionary Director.. . . . . . . . . . . $5,000

Dual Supporter. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $300

Luminary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $10,000

Patron. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $400

GRAND TOTAL = $

DELIVERY INFORMATION Your tickets will automatically be mailed to the billing address listed above unless you select one of the options below. Orders received on or after June 8 will automatically be placed at Will Call.

On the day of the screening, your tickets may be picked up at the theater’s Will Call desk.

I would like my tickets held at Will Call (photo ID required).

I would like my tickets held at Will Call. However, I also authorize the following person to pick up my tickets at Will Call (photo ID required):

**Please enclose proof of age or student status. This option is not available online.

PRINT AUTHORIZED PERSON’S NAME

WWW.FRAMELINE.ORG 71

venues Castro Theatre www.castrotheatre.com

Roxie Theater www.roxie.com

Bus/Streetcar: 24 Divisadero, 33 Ashbury-18th, 35 Eureka, 37 Corbett, F Market

Bus: 14 Mission, 22 Fillmore, 33 Ashbury-18th, 49 Van Ness/Mission

MUNI Metro: K, L, M, T (exit at Castro station)

BART: 16th & Mission station

429 Castro St. (between Market & 18th)

Victoria Theatre

3117 16th St. (between Valencia & Guerrero)

www.victoriatheatre.org 2961 16th St. (between Capp & Mission) Bus: 14 Mission, 22 Fillmore, 33 Ashbury-18th, 49 Van Ness/Mission BART: 16th & Mission station

BART: transfer to MUNI Metro at the Embarcadero, Montgomery, Powell, or Civic Center stations

14th St.

parking information

Castro

M ar ke tS tr ee t

15th St. 16th St. 17th St. s South Van Nes

18th St. Mission

Valencia

Guerrero

Dolores

Church

Sanchez

Noe

19th

20th St.

Frameline is pleased to partner with Everett Middle School in providing parking for $10 per car per day as a fundraiser for this wonderful neighborhood school.

All proceeds will go directly to funding classroom supplies.

The lot is located on 17th Street between Church and Sanchez. Parking is available on a first-come, firstserved basis. Please see the parking sched足ule at frameline.org. Please note that Frameline is not responsible for cars left in the lot after closing; cars can be picked up the following day as soon as the lot reopens.

Street parking can be difficult to find throughout the Castro and Mission Districts. If you do find a space, please be aware of parking restrictions on many streets.

In the Mission District, you also might try the parking garage at 42 Hoff Street, off 16th Street between Mission and Valencia.

101

box office & parties

San Francisco

Opening Night Gala

1 st

www.terrasf.com Terra Gallery 511 Harrison Street, San Francisco

SOMA

Closing Night Party

Festival Box Office presented by Showtime

M

Golden Gate Park

ar ke t

th

11

www.sfoasis.com Oasis Nightclub & Cabaret 298 11th Street, San Francisco

速

1

Mission Castro

72 SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL LGBTQ FILM FESTIVAL

101

280

www.frameline.org HRC Action Center and Store 575 Castro Street, San Francisco

festival info Festival Box Office Presented by

Rialto Cinemas Elmwood ®

www.rialtocinemas.com 2966 College Ave. (at Ashby), Berkeley

Located inside The HRC Action Center and Store, 575 Castro St (between 18th & 19th) in San Francisco.

Driving: Hwy 24 E » exit at Claremont Ave. turn left, then slight left at College Ave.

Tickets go on sale to Frameline members beginning Friday, May 22. Become a member the following week and receive immediate discounts on Festival tickets and merchandise.

AC Transit Bus: 9 to College Ave., 51/851 to Ashby Ave. BART: Rockridge station » AC Transit 51/851 to Ashby Ave. Ashby station » AC Transit 9 to College Ave.

Berkeley

Ticket sales open to the general public beginning Friday, May 29.

PARKING

13

Ashby

Walk-up ticket sales • Membership services Festival merchandise • General Festival information

Patron Courtesies • All seats are general admission, and multiple seat-saving is not permitted.

t

Br oa

24

on

m ed

Pi

www.landmarktheatres.com 4186 Piedmont Ave. (at Linda), Oakland

Driving: Interstate 580 E » exit at Broadway Auto Row/Webster St., keep left to merge onto Broadway, then turn left at Piedmont Ave. AC Transit Bus: C to Piedmont Ave., 12 to Linda Ave. BART: 12th Street station » AC Transit 12 to Linda Ave. MacArthur station » AC Transit C to Piedmont Ave. PARKING

Parking is available on surrounding neighborhood streets where meters run until 6pm Monday through Saturday.

and

a

Landmark Theatres Piedmont

nd

Ave

Oakland

Li

o Pabl

880

Mac Ar th ur

80

San

580

ord your ticer k online aets framelin t e.org

AVAILABLE SERVICES:

dw ay

Parking is also available in the Elmwood Parking Lot just west of College Avenue on Russell Street, one block north of the theatre.

Alta Bates Summit Medical Center has a parking garage located on Colby Street between Ashby Avenue and Webster Street.

Daily 1:00 pm - 7:00 pm (closed on Memorial Day)

College

In the Elmwood neighborhood, two-hour parking is strictly enforced until 6 pm. If you drive south on College Avenue, there is unlimited parking throughout the Rockridge neighborhood.

BUSINESS HOURS:

l Oak

Ave

• While waiting in line, please be considerate of our neighbors and local businesses.

13 We remind patrons that it’s now illegal to smoke while waiting in line or near entrances to venues.

• Please refrain from wearing perfumes and other scented products so that attendees with environmental sensitivities can comfortably enjoy the films. Thank you.

Services for People with Disabilities Frameline is committed to accommodating audience members with disabilities, offering early seating as needed. Please make yourself known to the theater house manager for assistance.

All screening venues are wheelchair accessible.

Assisted listening devices are available at the Rialto Cinemas™ Elmwood. All screening venues have wheelchair-accessible bathrooms. At the Roxie, please ask the house manager for the key to an accessible bathroom.

American Sign Language interpretation will be provided at the Festival Awards presentation and many introductions and post-screening Q&A sessions of subtitled films throughout the Festival.

Please visit www.frameline.org for details on ASL-assisted screenings.

WWW.FRAMELINE.ORG

73

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76 SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL LGBTQ FILM FESTIVAL

WHO SHOULD GET TESTED FOR HIV? EVERYONE.

See how often testing is recommended.

Visit HelpStopTheVirus.com Š 2015 Gilead Sciences, Inc. All rights reserved. UNBC1858 03/15

78 SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL LGBTQ FILM FESTIVAL

NCLR is a proud supporter of Frameline 39 and #LOVEforAll Support our campaign: Booster.com/LoveForAll

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SFGMC Elton for Frameline.pdf

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4/6/15

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MAY 22ND TO JUNE 13TH VICTORIA THEATRE RAYOFLIGHTTHEATRE.COM BOOKS, MUSIC & LYRICS BY LAURENCE O’KEEFE & KEVIN MURPHY DIRECTED BY ERIK SCANLON MUSIC DIRECTION BY BEN PRINCE CHOREOGRAPHY BY ALEX RODRIGUEZ

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Celebrating Our 36th Anniversary

Serving a seasonal selection of fine ingredients, including sustainably harvested fish and farmers’ market produce.

Hayes Street Grill is proud to be a sponsor of Frameline’s 39th San Francisco International LGBTQ Film Festival.

Lunch Monday through Friday Dinner nightly 320 Hayes Street @ Franklin San Francisco (415) 863-5545

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Not valid on limited edition pins, sale items, alcoholic beverages or tax.

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Proud to sponsor Frameline39!

Event Production Specialists

For more information call 415.430.5559 or visit our website at www.eceeproductions.com.

WELCOME to the

GREYSTONE HOTELS SAN FRANCISCO COLLECTION

415.249.7915 for reservations & information

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PROUD LOCAL SPONSORS OF FRAMELINE39

586 Castro St, b/w 18th and 19th San Francisco, CA 94114 P 415.431.2988 F 415.431.2908 E eyegotchasf@yahoo.com

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TODAY

PFLAG San Francisco Loves You Stay Aware Celebrate With Care

NOT AGAIN, BIG TOBACCO! E-cigarettes are harmful, just like cigarettes.

Sold by Tobacco Industry Highly Addictive Nicotine Public Use Restricted to Curb

pflagsf.org 415-921-8850

FIND OUT MORE AT: SFTOBACCOFREE.ORG

QUIT NICOTINE (415) 206-6074 | SF DEPT OF PUBLIC HEALTH

Serving the Castro since 1981!

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tS

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ee t

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ar ke M

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Noe Street

CafĂŠ | Restaurant | Catering

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18th Street

Proud to support Frameline39 San Francisco International LGBTQ Film Festival

Dan Healy Whether navigating the next turn or documenting the past, at Aspiriant we help our clients become the director of the movie that is their lives.

415.699.0552 DanHealyHomes.com LIC# 01301070

We applaud Frameline39 and all the filmmakers, cast, and crew in bringing the movies of all our lives to the silver screen... using the power of film to change the world in a way that only film can.

/ DanHealyHomes www.aspiriant.com

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S I M P LY T H E B E S T 415 550 6464 tastecatering.com CATERING & EVENT PLANNING

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T H E AT E R Proud home of Frameline Film Festival since 1979 ROXIE.COM

WWW.FRAMELINE.ORG 91

We Make Everyday Life Better, Every Day

We invite you to be part of an organization that improves the world around us with the unique ideas and innovation that only you can bring.

The Clorox Company is an EEO/Affirmative Action Employer.

www.TheCloroxCompany.com/careers

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Please view our career opportunities online and reference Frameline.

WWW.FRAMELINE.ORG 93

SIP SAVOR ENJOY FIVE GENERATIONS OF WORLD-CLASS HOSPITALITY

With nine attorneys in two locations, we serve the LGBT community with expertise, experience and sensitivity.

We offer services in:

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THURSDAY, JUNE 25th at 7:00pm To buy tickets go to tickets.landmarktheatres.com

Hand-crafted Chocolates and Confections available in Gift Sets and Favors Poco Dolce Confections 2419 3rd Street San Francisco, CA 94107 415.255.1443

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ONE SHOW ONLY!

SUNDAY, JUNE 28th at 11:00am To buy tickets go to tickets.landmarktheatres.com

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Proud Catering Sponsor for

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Caruso Company video production agency www.carusocompany.tv

PLAY. HAVE FUN. DO BUSINESS.

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PREPARED FOODS CAKES - BAKED GOODS CATERING

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doloresparkcafe.com enjoy our sister locations: Duboce Park Cafe & Precita Park Cafe

Congratulations to Frameline on their 39th Annual Film Festival making it the largest celebration of LGBTQ cinema.

We join Frameline to celebrate the diversity in our communities with the aim to create unity through art and media!

104 SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL LGBTQ FILM FESTIVAL

106 SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL LGBTQ FILM FESTIVAL

We create mobile engagement solutions for local advertisers, sports venues and entertainment producers. Our services include text message marketing, text-to-screen, text voting, and subscriber database management. Contact Loyda Drew at loyda.drew@mobivity.com or 818-533-1131 or visit mobivity.com for more information.

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THINK GLOBALLY. LISTEN LOCALLY. Proud to support creativity in the Bay Area.

Proud to sponsor Frameline39.

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Celebrating 5 years of putting filmmakers first.

festivals theatrical digital educational fiscal sponsorship

PROUD SPONSOR http://pocketgems.com/careers/

Proudly Supporting Frameline39

114 SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL LGBTQ FILM FESTIVAL

Frameline is more than your favorite summertime event! Our free year round community screening series returns to the Roxie Theater this fall, and we’re expanding to Oakland at the Landmark Piedmont Theatre starting in late 2015.

Frameline Encore aims to increase accessibility to diverse queer stories, with an emphasis on films and discussions about underrepresented experiences, such as gender variant folks and queer communities of color.

Frameline Encore is made possible in part through the generous support of:

frameline board and staff

frameline39 staff

OPERATIONS

PROGRAMMING

Steve Abbott SEAT CAPTAIN

Kevin Schaub

Alex Albers

PROGRAM & HOSPITALITY MANAGER

board of directors

frameline staff

Michael J. Colaneri

Frances Wallace

PRESIDENT

Lesley Weaver VICE PRESIDENT

Machu Latorre SECRETARY

Chris Cowen TREASURER

Eugene Clifton Cha Moira Luz Dawson Jill Golden Liz Pesch Jason Russell Christopher Wiseman EMERITUS

L inda Harrison, CHAIR Adam Berman Dan Flanagan Glenn Kiser Michael Kossman Tom Magnani Thom Matson Randolph (Randy) Quebec

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Desiree Buford

DIRECTOR OF EXHIBITION & PROGRAMMING

TJ Busse

FINANCE MANAGER

Andy Bydalek DIGITAL MEDIA COORDINATOR

Alex Chousa

DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS & MARKETING

Taylor Hodges

YOUTH IN MOTION PROJECT COORDINATOR

Mariana Lopez

ADMINISTRATIVE & COMMUNICATIONS ASSOCIATE

Krista Smith DIRECTOR OF DEVELOPMENT

David Warczak

STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS & DEVELOPMENT MANAGER

Alexis Whitham

DIRECTOR OF DISTRIBUTION & EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMMING

acknowledgments ··Julie Ansell ··Rod Armstrong ··Keith Arnold ··David Averbach ··Brian Benson ··Charlie Boudreau ··Joe Bowman ··Laurent Boyé ··Megan R. Brodkey ··David Castro ··Castro Merchants ··Center for Asian American Media ··Cinephil ··Treasurer José Cisneros ··Steve Clark Hall & the Eureka Valley Promotion Assoc. Planning Committee ··Kevin Clarke ··Cohen Media Group ··Brian Collette ··Noah Cowan

··Chris Damon ··Lisa Daniel ··JC Decaux San Francisco ··Ryan Delgado ··David Donahue ··Ioana Dragomirescu ··Rob Epstein ··The Correa Family ··The Film Collaborative ··Films Boutique ··Isabel Fondevila ··Jeffrey Friedman ··Mark Ganter ··Neil Giuliano ··Bryan Glick ··Stephen Gong ··Tim Grady ··Joshua Grannell ··Thomas & Phoebe Hannon ··Chris Hatfield ··Heklina / Stefan Grygelko

VOLUNTEER COORDINATOR

Peter L. Stein

Sarah Flores

SENIOR PROGRAMMER

BOX OFFICE MANAGER

SCREENING COMMITTEE

··Alex Albers ··Amy Anner ··John Basgall ··Natalie Bell ··Sam Berliner ··Joseph Bowman ··Margot Breier ··Vincent Calvarese ··Joe Carlin ··John Carr ··Luis Casillas ··Celeste Chan ··Frances Chen ··Jackie Dennis ··Janne Ebel ··Elsa Eder ··George Fencl ··David M. Field ··Russ Flanagan ··Dan Fourrier ··Dulce Garcia ··Will Gardner ··Adriana Gordon ··Mary Guzman ··Shaleece Haas ··Larry Heller ··Sandy Holmes ··Sade Huron ··Asher Jelinsky ··Erica Johnson ··Eric Jost

··Ken Katen ··Zachary Kelly ··Karl Knapper ··Barbie Leung ··Hy Levy ··David Liu ··Dan Luther ··Milton Magana ··Mac McGilbray ··Greg Morris ··Nicole Opper ··Beth Pielert ··Jordan Plath ··Sarah Raab ··Oscar Raymundo ··Jana Rickjerson ··Holly Roach ··Afonso Salcedo ··Michelle Sieglitz ··Lex Sloan ··Dustin Smith ··Texas Starr ··Bob Sullivan ··Tommy Sunderland ··Anand Vedawala ··Lucas Waldron ··Philip Walker ··Taylor Whitehouse ··Kolmel WithLove ··Alice Wu

··Allegra & April Hirschman ··Marcus Hu ··Brian Hubbard ··David Hung ··Patrick Hurley ··IFC Films ··Steve Indig ··Janus Films ··Tony Jenkins ··Carolina Jessula ··Shannon Kelley ··Kate Kendell ··Michael Kerner ··Jennifer Kim ··Glenn Kiser ··Vivian Kleiman ··Sue Krenek ··Dolby Laboratories ··Lexi Leban ··Letty Ledbetter ··Evie Leder & Gretchen Lee ··Claudia Lehan ··Le Pacte ··Michael Lumpkin

116 SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL LGBTQ FILM FESTIVAL

Mariama Nance PRINT TRAFFIC COORDINATOR

B’stro ··Jill Tracy ··Mary Puls ··Gretchen Lee ··Kelsey Lyon ··Antonio Rusevski

PRINT BROKER

Peaches Christ Productions ··Joshua Grannell ··Brian Benson ··Bobby Barber ··Matthew Riutta

PROGRAMMING & HOSPITALITY ASSISTANT

Hal Rowland

TECHNICAL DIRECTOR

Hilda Schmelling

OPERATIONS MANAGER

Thuy Tran

TRAVEL COORDINATOR

EVENTS

HOUSE MANAGERS

··Courtney Atinksy ··Kate Carroll ··Gyllian Christiansen ··Glynda Cotton ··Ryan Jones ··Jamie Mott ··Sarah Raab ··JC Rafferty ··Candace Roberts ··Jess Salgado ··Ed Varga SPONSORSHIP SPONSORSHIP ASSOCIATE

··Media Luna ··Maria Lynn ··The Match Factory ··Travis Mathews ··Madhukar Mayavan ··Michael McNamara ··Cornelius Moore ··Lucy Mukerjee-Brown ··NAMAC ··Don Nasser ··Steve Nasser ··Kathy Nelson ··Valeska Neu ··Mary Nicely & Nicely Done Solutions ··Ninth Street Independent Film Center ··Masashi Niwano ··Rick Norris ··Jenni Olson ··Open Reel ··Outfest LA ··Susan Oxtoby ··Park Circus ··Joanne Parsont

PUBLICATIONS

FESTIVAL TRAILER

Natacha Pope

Kapish Singla

FESTIVAL IDENTITY & DESIGN

E. Cee Productions · Eliote Durham EVENTS PRODUCER

··Cleo Montenegro ··Billy Picture PUBLICITY PUBLICISTS

Larsen Associates ··Karen Larsen ··Vince Johnson Charles Zukow Associates ··Charles Zukow ··Kevin Kopjak Curran Nault

PUBLIC RELATIONS COORDINATOR

Brian Ray

OUTREACH COORDINATOR

··Kristin Pepe ··Cat Perez ··Brandon Peters ··Hona Pittaluga ··Jason Plourde ··K.C. Price ··Christopher Racster ··Orly Ravid ··B. Ruby Rich ··Matthew Riutta ··Rachel Rosen ··Jay Rosenblatt ··Carol Rossi ··Gavin Rynne ··San Francisco Film Society ··San Francisco Jewish Film Festival ··San Francisco LGBT Community Center ··Cosimo Santoro ··Christopher Scanlan ··Kirsten Schaffer ··Brian Schulz ··John Schwenger ··Scuttle

Denise Granger Brianna Nelson

PUBLICATIONS MANAGER

Charles Purdy COPY EDITOR

Juan Ramirez DISTRIBUTION

Julie Ann Yuen DESIGNER

PROGRAM NOTE WRITERS

··Rod Armstrong ··Robert Avila ··Julia Barbosa ··Joe Bowman ··Brian Bromberger ··Michael Fox ··Will Gardner ··Pam Grady ··Carol Harada ··Laura Henneman ··Allegra Hirschman ··April Hirschman ··Steven Jenkins ··Chris Keech ··Sean Krainert ··Lucy Laird ··Frako Loden ··Michael LoPresti ··Leah LoSchiavo ··Natalie Mulford ··Monica Nolan ··Joanne Parsont ··Brendan Peterson ··Charles Purdy ··Tim Sika ··Angelique Smith ··Mordecai Stayton

··Katharine Setzer ··Rick Solomon ··Skywalker Sound ··Emilie Spiegel ··Ruthe Stein ··Jim Stephens ··Strand Releasing ··The Stud ··SundanceNow Doc Club ··Swank Motion Pictures ··Lewis Tice, in memoriam ··TLA Releasing ··Philip Walker ··Bill Weber ··Christopher White ··Eric Whitney ··Wide Management ··Supervisor Scott Wiener ··Jeffrey Winter ··Kathy Wolfe ··Wolfe Releasing ··Bård Ydén ··Kim Yutani

EMBERS M E N I L ME

HIP

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D

100 Crushes Chapter 6: They 64, 66 11 Life Lessons from an Awesome Old Dyke 62, 63 50% 62 54: The Director’s Cut 42

The Dancer and The Crow 64 Deep Run 54 Desert Migration 54 Do I Sound Gay? 55 Drag Mama 63 Dyke Central Episodes 6-10 43

A

Eisenstein in Guanajuato 32 Elise 66 Engender 65

ABSENCE: No Fats, No Femmes, No Asians 65 Actresses 64 Adrift in Sunset 60 After Love 46 Akeelah and the Bee 67 The Album 64 Alex & Ali 53 All About E 46 Alto 42 The Amina Profile 53 Ascendance: The Angels of Change Documentary 53 Audible 64

B Baby Steps 47 Bare 25 Be Here Nowish: Episode 2 63 Bearmania 58 Beat 64, 65 Beautiful by Night 65 Beautiful Something 43 Bedding Andrew 66 Bi Candy 62 The Birthday 64 Blood and Water 64 Breakaway 64 Broads to Watch Out For! 62

C Caged 65 Camouflage 59 El Canto del Colibrí 54 Carina 63 Carmín Tropical 47 Charlotte 63, 65 Cherry Bomb 65 Code Academy 63 Coming Up Queer 63

E

F F*ggot 66 Fassbinder — To Love Without Demands 55 Feelings Are Facts: The Life of Yvonne Rainer 55 Female Masculinity Appreciation Society 65 Finding Phong 56 The First Session 63 Float 57, 66 Floating! 47 Flying Solo: A Transgender Widow Fights Discrimination 62, 66 Followers 66 Fresno 33 From the Beginning 55 From This Day Forward 34 Fun in Boys Shorts 63 Fun in Girls Shorts 63 The Future Perfect 66

G Game Face 56 Get Animated! 64 The Girl Bunnies.

ROCKETSHIP. 64 Give Him Something Red 66 Glow 66 Gold Star 56, 65 Golden 63 Guidance 48

H Happy & Gay 64 Health Class 59 Heavenly Peace 64 Heft 59 Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party 43

120 SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL LGBTQ FILM FESTIVAL

Hidden Away 48 Hole 66 Homegrown 64 How to Win at Checkers (Every Time) 35

I I Am Michael 19 I Do 67 I Don’t 65 I Love Her 64 I Love Her, But 64 In the Grayscale 48 In The Hollow 66

J Jason and Shirley 44

K Kumu Hina: A Place in the Middle 61

L Lady of the Night 64 Larry Kramer in Love and Anger 36 Laundry Mood 65 The Little Deputy 63 Liz in September 37 Love Island 49

M Ma/ddy 66 Magic Mike XXL 41 Mamis: A Family Portrait 54, 62 Margarita, with a Straw 49 Mariposa (Butterfly) 49 McTucky Fried High 64 A Message for the Future: Stories from the AIDS Frontlines 64 Mind/Game: The Unquiet Journey of Chamique Holdsclaw 56 Mindtease 64 Mini Supreme 63 Moonlight 45 My Life Is a Dream 65 Myrna the Monster 64

N Nancy from East Side Clover 62, 65 Naz & Maalik 44 The New Girlfriend 50 No No, Homo 65 Noam 63

O Olya’s Love 57 One Year Lease 63, 66 Only in San Francisco 65 Open Relationship 63 (Orpheus) The Poetics of Finitude 46, 64 Out Again 62 Out to Win 23

P Packed in a Trunk: The Lost Art of Edith Lake Wilkinson 57 Paper Thin 64 “Passing” 65, 66 Peace of Mind 57 Pepper 64 Peter de Rome: Grandfather of Gay Porn 58 Pipe Dream 63 Playing with Balls 62, 63 Pop-Up Porno: m4m 63 Portrait of a Serial Monogamist 50 Put the Needle on the Record 43

Q QORDS Camp 63 Queens at Court 65 Queer Habits 64, 65 Querelle 41

R Realness & Revelations 65 Reel in the Closet 58 Roads 64 The Royal Road 58

S S&M Sally 44 Sachet 64 The Same Difference 59 San Cristobal 67 Score! Queers in Sports 65 Scrum 59 Seashore 50 Sebastian 67 Seed Money: The Chuck Holmes Story 59 Separate, Together 62 Sex, Politics & Sticky Rice 60, 62 Shameless 65 Showboy 66 Siren 62 Stealth 63, 66

Stella Walsh 62, 65 Stevie 62 Still A Rose 62 Stories of Our Lives 38 Stuff 45 Sugarhiccup 63 Summer Nights 51 The Summer of Sangaile 21 Supernature 64 The Surface 45 Sworn Virgin 51

T Tab Hunter Confidential 27 That’s Not Us 45 Thirst 66 Thirst & Desire 66 Those People 39 To Russia with Love 60 Together Forever 50 Tomgirl 66 Tough 65 Tradesman’s Exit 63, 65 Transtastic 66 Trémulo 67 True Wheel 65 Two 4 One 51 The Typist 64

U Under The Last Roof 66 Up Close & Personal 66

V V is the Warmest Color 63 Victory Day 57 Visible Silence 60

W Wayne 53 Welcome to This House, a film about Elizabeth Bishop 60 Whatever We Want to Be 62, 63 While You Weren’t Looking 52 A Woman Like Me 61 Worldly Affairs 67

X Xenia 52

Y The Year We Thought About Love 61 The Yes Men Are Revolting 61

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