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Filmmaker Jenni Olson Is Bringing Landmark Queer Films Back to Screens

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man marching in front of pride banner with raised first
Marchers in the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day in 1977, a still from Arthur J. Bressan Jr.'s 'Gay USA,' 1977. (Courtesy of Frameline)

Like most good stories about underappreciated artists, filmmaker Arthur J. Bressan Jr.’s revival begins with a pile of cardboard boxes. Specifically, crates of scripts, correspondence and film reels sitting in a Frameline office in 1992. In that pile, Jenni Olson, Bay Area filmmaker, curator, archivist, online pioneer and then-Frameline festival co-director, discovered what would become one of her biggest undertakings: bringing Bressan’s work back to audiences.

As with many tales of this kind, even after the physical media was rediscovered, copyright issues kept Bressan’s films in limbo for several more decades. Only recently has his powerful oeuvre begun to receive the praise it deserves, thanks to The Bressan Project, an ongoing effort by Olson and Bressan’s sister, Roe Bressan, to preserve, restore and distribute the work of the late filmmaker.

Before he died of AIDS in 1987, at age 44, Bressan was a filmmaker’s filmmaker, creating a vivid range of work including documentaries, narrative-driven pornography, and his 1985 landmark feature, Buddies, the first dramatic film to focus on the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

man in hospital smock and mask looks down at man on hospital bed
A still from Arthur J. Bressan’s ‘Buddies,’ 1985, screening at the Roxie on Feb. 22, 2025 as part of ’40 Years of Queer.’ (Courtesy of Frameline)

“He was very proud that he made all kinds of movies. He felt it was all part of filmmaking,” Olson explains. “All of his work is instilled with a gay liberation ethos, even the porn films.” In the adult film Passing Strangers, the characters march down Polk Street in the real-life 1974 Gay Freedom Day parade.

In Bressan’s commitment to depictions of joyful queer life set in San Francisco, Olson has an antecedent. Her own multihyphenate career is as much about preserving and presenting the work of others as it is about creating what she describes as “urban landscape essay films,” most of which feature San Francisco or California history as a character all its own.

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“I always say my films are about a butch dyke pining over unavailable women, and some other topic,” she laughs.

In addition to spearheading Bressan’s revival, Olson is enjoying several retrospectives of her own work — both feature and short films — while curating multiple series on both sides of the Bay. Over the next few months, both filmmakers are getting their due, and local audiences are getting a chance to take in rare and important examples of queer cinema at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, the Roxie and 4 Star Theater.

portrait of person in plaid shirt with short gray hair, hand on chin
Filmmaker, curator, archivist and online pioneer Jenni Olson is the force behind much of the queer cinema gracing Bay Area screens this winter and spring. (Courtesy of BAMPFA)

Queer film in the spotlight

Through Feb. 23, BAMPFA is presenting the Olson-curated series Masc II: Mascs plus Muchachas, a celebration of masc, butch, and trans-focused films (a follow-up to last year’s Masc series, co-curated by Olson).

This year’s lineup includes several remarkable rarities, including Shusuke Kaneko’s 1988 soft-focus fantasy Summer Vacation 1999, a gender-bending melodrama that largely fell out of circulation in the past three decades. And screening in the Bay Area for the first time in 74 years, Muchachas de uniforme is a 1951 Mexico remake of Mädchen in Uniform, a cult classic considered the first openly lesbian film.

On Monday, Feb. 24 — the day after the BAMPFA series wraps — the 4 Star Theater screens Juice, Bressan’s final adult film, to an audience 18 and over. (Yes, attendees will be carded.) Olson will introduce and then lead a post-screening discussion.

a person in a uniform sits on a windowsill reading
A still from Shusuke Kaneko’s 1988 film ‘Summer Vacation 1999.’ (Courtesy of BAMPFA)

And starting Feb. 16 and spanning several months this spring, moviegoers have the opportunity to take in Olson’s exciting lineup, 40 Years of Queer, co-curated with Roxie Executive Director Lex Sloan. Included in the program is Bressan’s Buddies.

Centered on two gay men who connect through an HIV hospice support program, Buddies feels like both a time capsule and timeless. It’s a beautifully simple narrative film with an invaluable premise: We can and do change one another’s lives, especially when pandemics force us to face our own purpose and mortality. (If you miss the Roxie screening, Buddies is currently on the Criterion Channel, and the San Francisco Public Library has both the DVD and Blu-ray discs.)

The Roxie series is rounded out with April screenings of Olson’s own lyrical features, The Royal Road and The Joy of Life. Each is paired with a short film, 575 Castro Street and Blue Diary, respectively, the latter featuring notable time markers such as sub-$2-a-gallon fuel prices and the 17 Reasons Why! sign, formerly located at 17th and Mission.

San Francisco city street in shadow with '17 Reasons Why!' sign at center
A production still from Jenni Olson’s short film ‘Blue Diary,’ 1998. (Courtesy of Jenni Olson)

A filmmaking conversation across time

Olson has been shooting 16mm film in the Bay Area since 1997. Her films draw on a rich reservoir of hyperlocal landmarks and iconography, so similar to the way Bressan pulled from elements of queer life in real time.

“My work is so anchored in the Bay Area, so I’m particularly excited for my films to show at the Roxie and BAMPFA and connect with audiences who appreciate this is the real Bay Area,” Olson says. These screenings and Q&As may double as gentle promotion for her next feature, Tell Me Everything Will Be Okay, currently in the early stages of production.

Thanks to Olson’s stewardship, the contents of those once-neglected boxes found in the Frameline offices have joined proper archives, with Bressan’s papers now part of Cornell University’s Human Sexuality Collection, and his films preserved and restored by the UCLA Film and Television Archive.

Increasingly, his films are moving onto digital platforms and reaching even more audiences. The Criterion Channel is currently streaming the restored documentary Gay USA, a 72-minute collage of 1977 Gay Freedom Day march footage from six cities, including evocative and delightful interviews set against San Francisco’s Market Street and Civic Center.

Even though they never met, Olson’s and Bressan’s films speak to each other. Both draw inspiration from Frank Capra melodramas, but their work commits to a sincerity that makes audiences feel deeply. Neither veers into maudlin territory.

“My work is very engaged with vulnerability on a lot of levels, and in that way it is ambitious and courageous,” Olson explains. Similarly, Bressan’s films are boldly queer-positive and earnestly romantic, especially his plot-driven adult films. It’s no surprise that audiences, including Olson, connect deeply with his work.

As Olson says, “I never knew Arthur, but I feel so close to him.”


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Masc II: Mascs plus Muchachas,’ a film series curated by Jenni Olson, continues at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive through Feb. 23. Arthur J. Bressan Jr.’s ‘Juice’ plays at the 4 Star Theater with a post-screening conversation with Olson on Feb. 24. ‘40 Years of Queer’ plays at the Roxie Theater Feb. 16–April 8.

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