Busy summer in LGBT film
Jenni Olson lends her expertise to draw attention to genre’s pioneers
Bay Area filmmaker, historian and curator Jenni Olson suddenly finds herself at the center of the LGBT film world this summer.
Her audio commentary augments Kino Lorber’s magnificent restoration of the landmark German lesbianthemed film “Mädchen in Uniform” (1931), which was released on Bluray in July, and this month, the Harvard Film Archive announced it was acquiring Olson’s films as well as her curated LGBT film and memorabilia collection as part of what will be called the Jenni Olson Queer Film Collection.
At 6 p.m. Friday, Aug. 21, she is also scheduled to cohost an online screening of Arthur J. Bressan Jr.’s groundbreaking 1977 documentary “Gay USA,” hosted by Frameline of San Francisco and the GLBT Historical Society of Los Angeles. Olson helped supervise the restoration of the film as part of her ongoing mission called “The Bressan Project,” an effort to burnish the late San Francisco filmmaker’s legacy.
The screening and discussion are free (a donation is optional), but a virtual ticket is required: glbthistory.ticketing. veevartapp.com.
Olson, who originally moved to San Francisco from her native Minnesota in 1991 to become codirector of Frameline, talked to The Chronicle recently by phone from her new Berkeley home.
Q: You are becoming almost singlehandedly responsible for resuscitating the reputation of pioneering LGBT filmmaker Arthur J. Bressan Jr., through what you call “The Bressan Project.” What fascinates you about his work?
A: He made a bunch of pioneering gay films in San Francisco — narrative features, adult films and this amazing documentary (“Gay USA”), which was actually the first gaymade, gay feature documentary. It came out a couple of months before “Word Is Out.”
One of the things about his work is he died in 1987 and essentially his films fell out of distribution and have not been available. So his profile as a filmmaker really suffers because of that. A few years ago I reconnected with his sister (Roe Bressan), who had donated all of the elements and materials to his films to Frameline after he died. After about 10 years, it went to Oddball Films (a San Francisco film archive), and we coordinated and figured out how to work on restorations and rerelease of all of his films.
Q: Why are you drawn to “Gay USA” in particular?
A: So “Gay USA” is this amazing snapshot of LGBT Pride celebrations that summer. You just have these amazing interviews with people talking about what it’s like to be gay in 1977.
I moved here in 1991, and so much of my own work as a filmmaker has been about the city and about the changes in the landscape and the people and the ethos. What’s particularly interesting about “Gay USA,” it’s 1977 but it has this almost hippie feeling to it. Arthur clearly came out of the ‘60s . ... it’s an interesting contrast. You get a real feeling of his lefty politics, which is really wonderful.
Q: Kino Lorber asked you to do the audio commentary for “Mädchen in Uniform.” Is this a key film for you?
A: My history with the film is, I went to the University of Minnesota in the ‘80s and got my B.A. in film studies. I started a gay film series there in 1987, and “Mädchen in Uniform” was the first film I ever curated. I had read Vito Russo’s book “The Celluloid Closet.” That’s how I came out. I read his book and I’m like, “OK, this is me.”
He had written extensively about “Mädchen in Uniform” in the book, and how it was considered to be the first lesbian film, its production history and its censorship history.
Q: I saw it for the first time in June; it was fantastic. The Kino Lorber restoration is beautiful.
A: It’s amazing. It came out in 1931, so an 89yearold film. And it holds up so well. It’s weirdly timely, given its critique of authoritarianism. The film was made a little more than a year before Hitler rose to power, and you have this sense of an undercurrent of what’s going on in German society at that time.
Q: The Harvard Film Archive is curating your films and other aspects of your work. I understand it’s pretty wideranging.
A: I wear a lot of hats in my career. They acquired my work as a maker of 16mm essay films, including the original negatives and elements. It’s a huge honor, and it’s a relief to feel everything will be taken care of. It’s validating as an artist.
And then there’s my collec
tion as an LGBT film historian and archivist. I have a very large collection of film clips — everything from hundreds of movie trailers, and featurelength trailer programs, vintage educational films, commercials, public service announcements. I have the original 16mm print of the 1977 Anita Bryant news conference where she gets a pie in the face from a gay activist.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m working on a film and a book — we’ll see which comes out first — called “The Quiet World,” kind of a followup to the “The Joy of Life” (2005) and “The Royal Road” (2015). It’s a 16mm urban landscape essay film about San Francisco, California and being a butch dyke, and all kinds of other digresses.