Frameline has new head of programming
Growing up near the Great Dismal Swamp of southern Virginia, Allegra Madsen had never heard of Frameline, the premier San Francisco LGBTQ film festival, and had yet to hear of anything else that was queerspecific.
But when she left the swamp on a detoured destination for San Francisco, immediately after her high school graduation, she found her way to the community of dedicated artists and storytellers that creates and produces Frameline. Fifteen years later, Madsen, 41, has been announced as the new director of programming for the film festival. She will take it through its 45th annual season, which will be done virtually with a few inperson events in June, to coincide with Pride.
Last year, Frameline44 drew 89,000 patrons to its festival, which was also virtual.
“I’m excited to be part of the legacy of Frameline and to bring my BIPOC lens to the LGBTQ+ community,” Madsen said by phone from her home in Oakland on Thursday, which was day six of her new job.
On her way from Virginia to San Francisco, Madsen had what she calls “a brief stopover in Chicago,” which was long enough to earn her bachelor’s degree in photography and graphic design from Columbia College. She later earned a master’s in curatorial practice from California College of the Arts.
Madsen had previously programmed films for Proxy, the renegade outdoor free festival on a patch of blacktop in Hayes Valley. She also created the Black Light Cinema series in BayviewHunters Point to provide a platform for an underrepresented film community.
“I’ve always been interested in the way art and culture can build community and have focused my practice on creating platforms for historically marginalized voices,” she said.
Madsen is already viewing product for Frameline 45, which she promises “will be a tight and focused festival. We’re seeing a lot of great content, and I’m deep in the weeds of screening and selecting, with my team.”
Her own personal team includes her wife, Danielle Marchman, a social worker, and their two daughters, Hera, 12, and Ada, 6. It also includes her mother, Linda Handy, a retired high school English teacher who also left the Great Dismal Swamp and followed her daughter to Oakland.
They live a few blocks apart in North Oakland, next to the Berkeley line.
“We’re 3,000 miles from a small town in Virginia, where our family has been for four generations,” said Madsen. “Our journey is very cinematic.”