Frameline, the oldest and longest-running LGBTQ+ film festival in the world, celebrates its FIFTIETH annual festival, beginning June 17 and running through June 27. Frameline50 brings us festival award-winners from Cannes to the Berlinale, with over 140 films from 35 countries.
This year, the festival returns after several years to San Francisco’s Castro Theatre for its biggest night. Other venues in San Francisco, Berkeley, and Oakland include the Roxie Theater, the Vogue Theatre, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), and The New Parkway Theater.
I’m guessing that the hottest ticket will be for the fest’s closing night film: Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, the latest from writer-director Jane Schoenbrun, following up their breakthrough hit I Saw the TV Glow. Highly acclaimed at its Cannes premiere last month, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is an affectionate homage to slasher filmmaking driven by queer sexual obsession, starring Emmy-winners Gillian Anderson (The X-Files) and Hannah Einbinder (Hacks). Schoenbrun and Einbinder will appear in person at the screening.
Other festival highlights will include:
- Opening Night with D’Arcy Drollinger’s Lady Champagne, the Festival Centerpiece – Byrdie O’Connor’s Barbara Forever, and the Pride Kickoff Film, Jennifer M. Kroot’s Hunky Jesus, .
- The newest sex comedy from pioneering queer filmmaker Gregg Araki (Mysterious Skin), I Want Your Sex, starring Olivia Wilde and Cooper Hoffman (Licorice Pizza).
- Actor Colman Domingo will attend in person to receive an award.
- As befitting a silver anniversary, Frameline50 will look back on films from its past half-century of programming: Bound, All Over the Guy, Desert Hearts, Cruising, Still Black: A Portrait of Black Transmen, Paris Is Burning (now celebrating its 35th anniversary), Caravaggio, and the newly restored Macho Dancer.
As in my Frameline coverage last year, I’ll be focusing on international cinema, especially directorial debuts. The Frameline programmers have a gift for finding the promising first films of new directors, such as last year’s Diciannove. In this year’s program, I’ve already focused on some promising films from South Africa, Tunisia, Brazil, Norway and French-speaking Canada. Just before the fest opens, I’ll be coming back with specific recommendations.
You can peruse the program and get passes and tickets at Frameline. Here’s the festival trailer.