Festival Report

Frameline Festival Preview

By Emmanuel Hapsis | Jun 18, 2009

If the ubiquitous rainbow flags didn't tip you off, it's officially the month of the gays. And with that comes Frameline, San Francisco's 33rd annual international LGBT film festival. For ten whole days, gay people become more than just sassy sidekicks or crude caricatures and take center stage as human beings with their own stories to tell.

Film festivals can be daunting with their countless offerings so I've compiled a festival guide to make it easier to find what you're looking for.

BIOPIC: The festival opens with Richard Laxton's An Englishman in New York, which tells the true story of the first "out" man in Britain -- the outspoken Quentin Crisp -- as he lives out the last third of his life in New York City. John Hurt reprises the role of Crisp (he also played him in 1975's The Naked Civil Servant) and is the primary reason to see this film. He is flawless in his delivery of lines like "Americans only elect Democrats to take a break from war" or "gay bars are just a more fashionable ghetto." Cynthia Nixon (best known for her role as snarky underdog Miranda in Sex and the City) also delivers as performance artist Susana Venture/Penny Arcade. If you like snappy one-liners, '70s and '80s New York, and old men working hats and scarves, this is the movie for you.
Thursday June 18, 7:00p at the Castro

MUST SEE DOCUMENTARY: Kimberly Reed's riveting debut film, Prodigal Sons, is not only a documentary about her transition from male to female, but also about the trials of a dysfunctional family. Kim left behind her former life as the co-captain of the varsity football team, but must confront her past as well as the issues with her estranged brother when she returns to Montana for her high school reunion. What results is not the transdoc you would expect; Kim's transition takes a back seat to an escalating sibling rivalry, a worsening mental disability, and, most randomly, an Orson Welles connection.
Wednesday June 24, 7:30p at the Castro

LESBIAN CAMP: Usually, films about domestic violence don't bring too many laughs...until Drool came along, that is. This outrageously campy flick follows Anora, a meek abused housewife in Oklahoma, who has reached her breaking point when a new woman comes into her life. Imogene is a Kathy K cosmetics saleswoman who moves in next door and gives Anora's family a much-needed makeover. I don't want to spoil too much, but what I will say is that, if you ever need to preserve a dead body and the convenience store doesn't have ice, just use a couple of Slurpees.
Saturday June 20, 9:30p at the Castro

MUST SEE: Rivers Wash Over Me is my favorite of the films I was able to preview. After the death of his mother, 15 year old Sequan must move from the comfort of New York to rural Alabama to live with his aunt and cousins. He quickly learns that Alabama doesn't take kindly to out black men who carry around James Baldwin novels. The film explores the gamut of hot-topic issues: racial, sexual, class, and the harms of the closet. I usually reserve tears for drunken viewings of the Oprah show, but this movie got it out of me. So good.
Wednesday June 24, 10p at the Castro

AVOID: At first I thought Misconceptions was a parody of a bad gay movie, but it quickly became clear that there was nothing clever behind the poor writing or acting. The story is about a super Christian southerner who gets a sign from god that she must be a surrogate for an interracial gay couple she happens to see on TV. This premise could have resulted in a movie about the collision of belief systems, but didn't come close. Orlando Jones, known for starring in 7-Up commercials, plays one half of the gay couple, a man who is not only a choreographer, but a fashion designer as well, because one stereotype just wasn't enough. Jones' character says things like "I love this fabric!" and urges his surrogate to let him play techno music for the unborn baby. And it gets worse: After a pantless fight with his husband in a parking lot, Jones turns to a shocked Southern family and, with tears in his eyes, says "Take a picture. It'll last longer." I wish I was kidding. Whoever wrote this needs to put the pen down and Orlando Jones needs to go back to hocking carbonated lemon-lime drinks.
Wednesday June 24, 12:00p at the Castro

FRENCH ART FILM: Can two ridiculously attractive twins carry a movie that has minimal dialogue and very few plot points? Sure! In Give Me Your Hand, Antoine and Quentin are making their way on foot from France to their mother's funeral in Spain. What results is a bit of casual sex, betrayal, brotherly brawls, and beautiful shots of the countryside. Be warned: there is sadly only a pinch of anything gay in the film, but still worth a gander.
Thursday June 25, 7:00p at the Castro

BRITISH FILM: In case you thought gay bashings were a thing of the past, Clapham Junction is here to prove otherwise. The violent, hypersexual movie takes place over one day and follows an interconnected group of Englishmen as they deal with their sexuality in vastly different ways. Some make out with caterers on their wedding day, others swap their wives for glory holes in public restrooms. Predictably, there's a heat wave passing through South London, which means lots of shirtless men. And, yes, there's a fair amount of gratuitous crotch shots, too.
Friday June 19, 9:30p at the Castro and Tuesday June 23, 9:30p at the Elmwood

GAY GANGS: 21-year-old director Simon Pearce hasn't made an ordinary coming out story. With Shank, he defies convention by setting his film against the dark, gritty backdrop of teen gang culture. Cal is a thug whose friends indulge in beating up gays and putting videos of the attacks on YouTube. The catch is that he's secretly gay and in love with his best friend and gang leader (who is constantly without a shirt and may or may not be gay himself). It isn't long before Cal is exposed and must face his former friends in a brutal climax scene. If you can handle graphic sexual violence and one really annoying French character, go see this movie.
Thursday June 25, 9:30p at the Victoria

MIDDLE EAST CONFLICTS: There is a wall of cement and barbed wire between Ramallah and Jerusalem and another between the gay people of this region and the ultra-religious traditionalists that surround them. City of Borders tells the interconnecting stories of five people who must battle homophobia as well as religious and national conflicts at every corner. Palestinian Samira and Israeli Ravit are a lesbian couple who must come to terms with their inherent opposing views, Boody is a young Palestinian who risks arrest or worse by climbing over the walls that keep him from his only sanctuary, a gay club called the Shushan in Jerusalem where he performs as Miss Haifa, and Sa'ar, the owner of Shushan and the first openly gay city council member, who must face death threats and ire from his Orthodox colleagues (these haters even bully his ailing mother!). This film is as much about the borders of sexuality as it is about the contested borders of war-torn nations. A definite must-see.
Tuesday June 23, 7:00p at the Roxie

FIGURE SKATING: If you keep up with figure-skating or watch Kathy Griffin's show on Bravo, you're probably familiar with Johnny Weir. He allowed a documentary crew to follow him for two years and capture his diva antics, outrageous outfits, and even a ridiculous bubble bath scene in which he interviews his best friend, Paris, with a Russian accent. As you might guess, Pop Star on Ice is super entertaining and often funny. Weir doesn't officially say he's gay and the skating world can't decide whether such a flamboyant, glittery character can be taken seriously as an athlete, but Weir proves that, no matter what you think of him, true talent transcends sexuality.
Saturday June 27, 11:00a at the Castro

SOCIAL DOCUMENTARY: Standing-n-Truth: Breaking the Silence is a low-budget documentary about what it means to be a "same gender loving" African American. The film explores it all, from how African American sexual identity is still influenced by slavery to how churches are dealing with the AIDS epidemic in the black community. The stories told in this film are beyond politics and religion; they are human stories of hope for a day when the fear and shame of the past can be put to rest.
Sunday June 21, 12:00p at the Roxie

TEEN DOCUMENTARY: Straightlaced: How Gender's Got Us All Tied Up is a documentary about gender and sexual identity through the lens of American high school students. Even though we would like to think that the next generation is far more accepting than their parents or grandparents, it's not entirely true. The rampant homophobia in public schools is so bad that one straight boy complains of being ridiculed for wearing a purple shirt to school. A teenage girl recalls hearing entire classrooms cheering as the news of her gay friend's suicide came over the school's intercom. It's depressing to see an entire generation so afraid of straying from prescribed gender roles that they're losing themselves in a macho, misogynistic world of intolerance. This doc will make you never want to hear "That's so gay!" again.
Friday June 26, 6:00p at the Roxie

Some other titles that I didn't have time to watch are:
Boy, Filipino director Aureus Solito's film about a well-off youth who rents a macho dancer named Aries and finds that it's possible to get beyond economic and educational barriers to make a meaningful connection.
Friday June 19, 9:30p and Saturday June 27, 4:15p at the Victoria

Light Gradient, a German film about young lovers on a bicycle trip through the Brandenburg Forest.
Sunday June 21, 7:00p at the Victoria and Thursday June 25, 4:30p at the Castro

Hollywood je t'aime, a fish-out-of-water story of a Parisian who finds himself far from home and his ex-boyfriend in Hollywood.
Saturday June 27, 8:30p at the Castro

And Then Came Lola, a sexy lesbian film with the pace of Run Lola Run.
Friday June 19, 7:15p at the Castro

The Frameline festival in out and proud from June 18-28, 2009. For more information, go to frameline.org.