Out There :: Frameline 39 is Coming to Town

Last week at a press conference held at Oasis nightclub, Frameline senior staffers announced the details for Frameline 39 , the San Francisco International LGBTQ Film Festival, coming up June 18-28 in San Francisco, Berkeley and Oakland. Executive director Frances Wallace promised a slate full of "conversation starters," and from what we can tell from the preview, she is correct.

Among the films from 33 countries are the works of 63 women filmmakers. Director of exhibition & programming Desiree Buford described opening-night offering "I Am Michael" as an envelope-pusher, as it's the true story of Michael Glatze, an SF-based gay rights activist who renounced homosexuality. It's still up in the air whether stars James Franco and Zachary Quinto will attend, but director Justin Kelly definitely will.
First out gay NBA player Jason Collins is one of the athletes interviewed in director Malcolm Ingram's documentary "Out to Win."

Director Malcolm Ingram's "Out to Win" features interviews with lesbian & gay pro athletes including tennis stars Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova, gay NBA player Jason Collins, retired NFL player David Kopay, and others. It's one of six programs in the spotlight series Game Changers: Sexuality & Sports, exploring what Buford called the "intersection of sexuality and athletics."

Other big nights include closing-night film "Bare" (director Natalia Leite), where you can watch the sexual sparks ignite between Sarah (Dianna Agron of "Glee") and Pepper (Paz de la Huerta of "Boardwalk Empire"); "Tab Hunter Confidential" (Tab Hunter and his partner will appear), directed by Jeffrey Schwarz, winner of this year's Frameline Award; and director Peter Greenaway's "Eisenstein in Guanajuato." Senior programmer Peter L. Stein pointed to the "sparkling and over-the-top imagery" in Greenaway's film, which speculates that the great Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein had a sexual awakening in Mexico while attempting to shoot a movie there in 1931.

Great late gay filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder would have been 70 this year, and Frameline honors him with a screening of "Fassbinder: To Love Without Demands." Director Christian Braad Thomsen illuminates his life and work, and the talking heads include RWF himself, from interviews Thomsen filmed in the 1970s. Adding to the tribute, Frameline will screen Fassbinder's last and gayest film, Querelle, based on Jean Genet's classic homoerotic novel.

Ever the documentary fan, Out There looks forward to director Ethan Reid's "Peter de Rome: Grandfather of Gay Porn"; director Jenni Olson's "The Royal Road"; director Michael Stabile's "Seed Money: The Chuck Holmes Story"; director Barbara Hammer's "Welcome to This House," a film about Elizabeth Bishop; director David Thorpe's "Do I Sound Gay?" (yes); and much else.

Proving that LGBT people are in fact everywhere, the festival will screen films from Albania ("Sworn Virgin"), Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina ("Love Island"), Kenya ("Stories of Our Lives"), and all over Latin America. And, appropriately for a film fest that was launched at a club fitted out with strippers' poles, Frameline will heat up the Castro Theatre screen on Pinkish Saturday night with a special preview of director Gregory Jacobs' "Magic Mike XXL," in which such beef-studs as Channing Tatum, Matt Bomer and Joe Manganiello indulge in what Stein called "one last bump & grind before hanging up their posing pouches."

A group of protesters decrying Israeli military interventions gathered at the entrance to the press launch, despite the fact that Frameline is not presenting any Israeli features this year, and therefore the Israeli Consulate is not a sponsor (there are two shorts from Israel). But because Israel is that rare Middle Eastern nation-state that supports its LGBT filmmakers and citizens, we're sure there will be plenty to protest in the future.

Info and tickets: frameline.org/festival