Frameline LGBTQ film fest returns
Frameline, San Francisco’s LGBTQ film festival and the largest of its kind in the world, will be back in Bay Area theaters June 16-30 for its 46th season.
With 132 total titles from 36 countries that encompass 46 feature narrative films, 30 feature documentaries, three episodic titles, 61 short films and 10 short film programs, Frameline46 returns to the robust programming of the pre-pandemic era with its biggest festival since 2019.
“We just want to seize the opportunity right now,” said Frameline director of programming Allegra Madsen in a phone call with The Chronicle.
“We were lucky last year that we were able to get some in-person screenings. This year we just really want to go as big as we can and bring as many queer filmmakers as possible here and join in to bring our whole queer community together.”
One key feature of the festival’s pandemic-era programming will carry on this year, too, as the festival revealed plans to offer an at-home viewing option titled Frameline Streaming Encore, making more than half of its 2022 programming available to stream nationally June 24-30.
The festival opens with the San Francisco premiere of the Prime Video series “A League of Their Own,” a reboot of the 1992 Penny Marshall women’s baseball comedy, starring Abbi Jacobson (“Broad City”) and Danville native D’Arcy Carden (“Barry”) set for release this year.
“On the surface, it’s very lighthearted and fun and a good time,” Madsen said. “I think everybody needs that breath, but I also feel that this series is able to take issues of gender-queerness and race head-on in a way that the original film perhaps wasn’t ready to in the ’90s. It’s light, it’s fun, but it’s also very serious and makes you think. I’m really excited to kick off the festival with something that’s that varied.”
“A League of Their Own” is not the
only reboot at Frameline46. “Queer as Folk” returns as a new Peacock series, set in New Orleans. The festival screens the first two episodes on June 17, followed by an onstage conversation with actors Devin Way, Fin Argus, Jesse James Keitel and other members of the ensemble cast.
The centerpiece presentations are “Girl Picture,” a Finnish comingof-age tale set over three successive weekends in the lives of three teen girls; and “Last Dance,” Coline Abert’s documentary about drag performer Vincent DeFonte, a.k.a. Lady Vinsantos — who got her start at San Francisco’s Trannyshack — as the artist prepares for one final show in Paris. The centerpiece party at Oasis follows the “Last Dance” screening on June 23, with San Francisco drag luminaries in attendance.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s lesbian melodrama “The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant,” which will screen at the festival. Closing out Frameline46 is François Ozon’s “Peter von Kant,” a lighter, genderswitched take on Fassbinder’s film.
“François Ozon is a longtime love of Frameline and former Frameline award winner, and this film is just an interesting moment in queer film history,” Madsen said. “‘Petra von Kant’ was a kind of pinnacle of lesbian cinema. This gender-swapped version tells a story of love, jealousy, greed and creativity gone sideways. It is just an amazing title to have right now.”
Not simply an international festival, this year’s Frameline program also highlights films by local filmmakers and films with Bay Area themes, among them former Chronicle staff writer David Lewis’ “All Kinds of Love”; H.P. Mendoza’s experimental “Attack, Decay, Release”; and Lauretta Molitor’s “Impresario,” a documentary about Marc Huestis, Frameline co-founder, filmmaker and producer of extravaganzas saluting Golden Age Hollywood.
“There’s an incredible amount of creativity in the Bay Area, and I want to highlight it and (have Frameline) be a platform for our unique Bay Area voices,” Madsen said. “It’s important to me to also build the Bay Area film community to make sure that we keep having these voices so we can have our stories told by some amazing creatives.”
Frameline’s tag line this year is “The Coast Is Queer,” which is playful but has serious intent behind it. The festival is also inaugurating a new award, Out in Silence, given this first year to director Micheal Rice for his documentary “Black as U R,” which examines homophobia in the Black community. Streaming the encore program nationally will give audiences living in more repressive areas of the U.S. the opportunity to see their lives reflected onscreen.
Noting the antiLGBTQ+ legislation that has arisen in Florida, Texas and Alabama, as well as other recent assaults on the community, Madsen wants the Bay Area to be a beacon for the rest of the country.
“Just sort of raise our hands and say that’s happening, but there is space out here for queer people to live and thrive,” she said.
“In a lot of ways, we are the collective queer voice, an identity-based festival where we can bring all of these queer voices together and have them speak with one another and have the whole LGBTQ+, all the letters kind of communicate with one another as well.”