By Robert St. Martin
Los Angeles, CA (The Hollywood Times) 6/13/24 – The oldest LGBTQ+ film festival in the United States is Frameline in San Francisco and this year celebrates its forty-eighth year. With venues at various theatres in San Francisco and Oakland, Frameline has a line-up of 60 films and more than 60 shorts. Tickets are going fast for many film offerings which will be screened at the Vogue Theatre, the Herbst Theatre, the Roxy Theatre, the Palace of Fine Arts, and other venues. As many of you know, the famous Castro Theatre was sold and is no longer the center of Frameline. To view information about all the films and order tickets, go to: https://www.frameline.org/festival/browse. The website provides trailers of most of the films, as more information. A number of the films are also available for screening online.
The opening night film on June 19 is In the Summers, directed by Alessandra LaCorazza. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize and Directing Award in the U.S. Dramatic competition at the Sundance Film Festival, this delicately powerful ode to fractured fatherhood and sibling solidarity follows sisters Violeta and Eva for the most formative years of their lives, spending the summers in New Mexico visiting their adoring but tempestuous father, Vicente. The two siblings must figure out a way to navigate coming of age and emerge unscathed as Vicente’s recklessness drives the roller coaster of their youth.
In his first major acting role, multi-Grammy and Latin Grammy Award-winning Puerto Rican rapper and activist Residente is a towering revelation, imbuing the complicated Vicente with a potent mix of vulnerability and danger. Filmmaker Alessandra Lacorazza – whose incisive direction was celebrated at Sundance – drew from personal experiences to bring her feature debut to life. Also starring Lío Mehiel (Mutt, Frameline47) and Sasha Calle (The Flash). In the Summers examines the complexities of family, trauma, and identity through its Latinx and queer characters at various epochal junctures on the winding road to redemption and salvation. Fittingly, In the Summers was also opening night film at the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival (LALIFF) recently.
A crowd-pleasing and insightful film at Frameline is Linda Perry: Let It Die Here, a documentary about the Grammy-nominated singer/songwriter, musician, and record producer Linda Perry, who takes center stage in documentarian Don Hardy’s (Citizen Penn) revealing and intimate biographical film. best known for being the primary songwriter and lead vocalist of 4 Non-Blondes, the San Francisco Bay Area transplant has collaborated with Céline Dion, Pink, Miley Cyrus, Alicia Keys, and many more music icons. However, as Hardy’s film illustrates, Perry is more than just a pioneering musician and gifted artist. An incredibly courageous person, Perry navigates fear, loss, and identity – both personal and artistic – with a raw, beautiful honesty. Linda Perry will be performing live at Frameline in a special event on the Pride Kick-Off Party at Oasis on June 28.
Much awaited at Frameline is Jules Rosskam’s Desire Lines, winner of the NEXT Special Jury Award at Sundance – a revolutionary declaration of following one’s authentic desire and a deep dive into transmasculine desire for cisgender gay men in this sexy, intimate doc-fiction hybrid. Ahmad, an Iranian American transgender man, explores his gay desires as he travels back and forth in time from a queer archive in the present with Kieran (played by Theo Germaine from Showtime’s Work in Progress), to a gay bathhouse in the past, walking the halls and bumping shoulders, and more, with cis men back in time.
Transcestor Lou Sullivan, a female-to-gay-male activist in the 1980s, comes alive through archival footage and letters, blazing the trail that present day transmasc folks experience as they talk openly and frankly about their experiences of sex with cis gay men.
From Brazil at Frameline is Julilana Rojas’ Cidade; Campo – which was awarded the Encounters Award for Best Director at the Berlin International Film Festival. This film is a diptych exploring the divides between urban and rural, past and present, and tangible and metaphysical. In the beguiling first half, Joana is haunted by the disappearance of her son, and emigrates to Sāo Paulo to live with her sister Tânia and Tânia’s grandchild Jaime after a flood wipes out her town and livelihood. There she enters into the domestic workforce of the big city, with lasting reverberations. In the second part, Flávia) arrives at her late, estranged father’s farm with her wife Mara (the mesmerizing Bruna Linzmeyer). As both struggle to adapt to life in the countryside, Flávia begins to suspect there is something lurking in the surrounding wilderness.
Of interest to theater lovers will be Mad About the Boy: The Noël Coward Story, directed by Barnaby Thompson. Playwright, composer, leading man; Oscar nominee, Tony winner, Time Magazine cover-star – the dazzlingly talented Noël Coward did it all. And he even spied for the Crown during World War II. Coward wrote was at his peak in British theater with the ghost story Blithe Spirit; the racy menage Design for Living; and the classic cinematic tearjerker Brief Encounter. As this lively documentary reveals, Coward was a master of self-invention. Raised in a working-class boarding house with no formal education after age 9, Coward turned himself into the ultimate upper-crust British sophisticate (cigarette holder, dressing gown, rolled Rs), dishing out with that winked toward his homosexuality. Narrated by Alan Cumming with Rupert Everett serving as Coward’s voice, the film has Adam Lambert belting on the soundtrack. With appearances by Dame Maggie Smith, Frank Sinatra, Lauren Bacall, and Lucille Ball.
Merchant Ivory, a revelatory documentary by Stephen Soucy, is about the filmmaking couple James Ivory and Ismael Merchant, who made 43 films over four decades – including A Room with a View (1985), Howards End (1992), and groundbreaking gay romance Maurice (1987). Their names conjure up sumptuous costumes, slyly subversive scripts, and legendary performances from Helena Bonham Carter, Emma Thompson, and Vanessa Redgrave – all giving dishy interviews here. Their relationship was polyamorous, and their sets, says Hugh Grant, “crackled with subliminal lust.” After Merchant’s untimely death, Ivory won a screenwriting Oscar for Call Me by Your Name, embracing overdue recognition as a beacon of queer cinema
Sally!, directed by Deborah Craig, is a heartfelt documentary about radical lesbian feminist Sally Gearhart, following her journey from a 23-year-old professor at a Christian college to her final days surrounded by a diverse and dedicated community. From the defeat of the Briggs Initiative to the founding of the first Women’s Studies program in the nation, to groundbreaking writing on lesbian separatist communities, the charismatic Gearhart was a fierce-hearted San Francisco political preacher at the center of many iconic movements of the 1970s and 1980s.
In the fictional narrative category, one film definitely worth a ticket is Duino, directed by Juan Pablo Di Pace & Andrés P. Estrada from Argentina. When college-age Matías attended an international school on Italy’s Adriatic Coast, he fell passionately into the world of his eclectic classmates, most memorably a live-wire Swedish rebel-prince named Alexander. Now decades later, as a filmmaker, he is trying to recapture the world and lost love by making a film about his past. While Duino starts in the present day, the flashbacks to Matías’ college years in Italy gradually take over, and we see what has so captivated and obsessed Matías for decades. Executive produced by the late television legend Norman Lear (All in the Family; Maude) and Brent Miller (One Day at a Time), Duino also stars Juan Pablo di Pace (The Mattachine Family), August Wittgenstein (Das Boot), Krista Kosonen (Tove), and Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson (Succession).
There is much buzz about the film Sebastian, directed by Finnish-British director Mikko Mäekelä. A young aspiring writer in London, Max forges a new identity for himself in the form of a ravenous sex worker: Sebastian (played by Ruaridh Mollica). Opening himself up to a previously unexplored world, Max suddenly finds himself unburdened by expectations and invigorated by possibility. When he begins writing thinly veiled stories about his double life, Max finds himself with the book deal he’d been dreaming of. But as his newfound experiences spur a creative output, Max must decide where he ends, and Sebastian begins.
Definitely of interest in Levan Akin’s film Crossing, one of the most hotly anticipated LGBTQ+ films of 2024. Crossing is the fourth feature from Swedish auteur Levan Akin (And Then We Danced; AMC’s Interview with the Vampire). The film follows Lia, a retired schoolteacher, who makes good on a promise to trace the whereabouts of her long-lost niece Tekla, who she’s told has fled their native Georgia for Istanbul, with the help of her neighbor and a lawyer fighting for trans rights.
One of the most beautiful films at Frameline this year is National Anthem, directed by Luke Gilford. This debut feature rooted in the director’s own experiences observes a young man’s blossoming among a community of queer rodeo performers in the American West. Even though he’s only 21, soft-spoken Dylan (Charlie Plummer in a remarkable performance) shoulders responsibility for his family, stabilizing his reckless single mother (a wonderful Robyn Lively) and raising his loving younger brother. When piecemeal work brings Dylan to the House of Splendor, a New Mexico ranch run by handsome Pepe (Rene Rosa) and charismatic Sky (Eve Lindley), he is immediately smitten. What began as a day’s labor leads to a deep connection with the idyllic, welcoming ranch family, and to Dylan’s journey of self-discovery.
Megan Park’s My Old Ass is a funny, insightful, and unexpectedly moving twist on the coming-of-age film that won over audiences at Sundance this year. After taking mushrooms on a camping trip, quick-witted 18-year-old Elliott (Maisy Stella) crosses paths with her 39-year-old self (the always alluring Aubrey Plaza) in the wilderness. What playfully begins as an examination of how the years have treated her body (well, her ass mostly) becomes a queer youth’s exploration of the expansiveness of her Bisexuality and ends with an ominous instruction from Elliott the elder: “Don’t fall in love.”
Highly recommended is Alexis Spraic’s The World According to Allee Willis a woman with significant lasting contributions to pop music and culture. From Earth, Wind & Fire’s “September” to the Pointer Sisters’ “Neutron Dance” to the theme song from the show Friends, Allee Willis was a singular musical phenomenon whose career defied the societal and industrial molds. The World According to Allee Willis is both a love letter to the late artist from the famous folks who loved her – Cyndi Lauper, Alice Walker, the Pet Shop Boys, Lily Tomlin, and Willis’ longtime partner Prudence Fenton – and a tour of Willis’ impressive archives of early video, kitsch collectibles, and musical offerings. You will see some of the coolest pool parties of the 80s where you could rub elbows with the likes of Elvira, Patti LaBelle, Paul Reubens, Joni Mitchell, and Debbie Harry at Willis’ astonishing Los Angeles home.
