Pride Month is in full June bloom, celebrating all of the letters in the LGBTQ+ community, its history, its diversity, and its culture. So there’s no better time to launch the 48th San Francisco International LGBTQ+ Film Festival, running through June 29 (streaming June 24–30) and presented as usual by the arts organization Frameline. Dubbed Frameline 48 for the sake of brevity, the festival has honored the many shades of LGBTQ+ cinema for decades and is the longest-running festival of its type. It’s especially welcome during Pride Month because one of the most effective platforms for addressing the queer experience and introducing it to a wide audience is storytelling, especially via movie and television projects.
Having lost access to its longtime hub the Castro Theater due to renovations retooling the landmark for concert presentation, Frameline 48 is embracing other San Francisco locations: the Roxie Theater, the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre, the Herbst Theatre, and the Vogue Theatre, plus The New Parkway Theater in Oakland, with parties and events at KQED Live, The Stud, Terra Gallery, and Oasis. But Frameline 48 still honored its Castro neighborhood roots, kicking off with a free outdoor event, the Juneteenth Film and Block Party on Castro Street, which featured live music, drag performances and a screening of the documentary Lil Nas X: Long Live Montero, centering on the controversial gay hip-hop star.
Recent feature films such as the colorful, knowing drag-oriented drama Solo, the audacious, lesbian-centric comedy Bottoms, and the noir-ish, Sapphic thriller Love Lies Bleeding may be wildly different in topic, theme, and tone, but they each do a superb job of incorporating aspects of LGBTQ+ life and culture in entertaining ways. Count on Frameline 48 to present an even broader range of insights into lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer lives over the course of its 11-day run, given plentiful opportunity by the sheer size of the schedule. It is, after all, California’s largest film festival and the most extensive LGBTQ+ film exhibition event in the world, presenting over 120 screenings this year alone.
Movers and shakers
A high-profile festival such as Frameline 48 will invariably bring in creators of note, including filmmakers responsible for some of the year’s entries, significant subjects of select features, and in this case, renowned movers and shakers who have contributed to the growth of the LGBTQ+ art scene. Among the celebrity guests: the Emmy Award-winning and Tony-nominated writer, producer, and actor Lena Waithe; singer-songwriter and producer Linda Perry; and drag performer Lady Camden. “Lena Waithe Conversation” is scheduled for June 29 at The Herbst and should cover some of Waithe’s acclaimed projects such as the TV series The Chi, as well as address the challenges faced by an LGBTQ+ person of color in Hollywood — and will be capped off with presentation of the Variety Creative Conscience Award.
As for Perry and Lady Camden, they will each be present in conjunction with documentaries covering their respective lives. Perry — a former fixture in the San Francisco rock scene who founded and led the incendiary band 4 Non-Blondes before becoming an in-demand studio wizard for recording artists such as Pink, Céline Dion, Miley Cyrus, and Alicia Keys — will be on hand for director Don Hardy’s Linda Perry: Let It Die Here, playing June 28 at the Herbst, and will also perform during Frameline 48’s Pride Kickoff Party at Oasis after the screening. Lady Like, directed by Luke Willis, features Lady Camden a.k.a. Rex Wheeler, the British expat drag queen and RuPaul’s Drag Race veteran who now lives in San Francisco. Screening June 26 at the Vogue, Lady Like recounts the performer’s journey from a troubled London childhood to participation on Drag Race and international fame.
Spanning the decades
Among other highlights of Frameline 48, In the Summers — the first feature from Alessandra Lacorazza and the winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival — is screening June 20 at the Palace of Fine Arts. And the 4K restoration of the groundbreaking 1994 lesbian relationship dramedy Go Fish, directed by Rose Troche and cowritten by Troche and the movie’s lead actress Guinevere Turner, will also play June 20 at the Palace of Fine Arts. Despite 30 years between the two releases, both films earned Frameline’s Completion Fund Grant and gained acclaim at Sundance. One of the more notable offerings slated to premiere at the festival is writer-director Anthony Schatteman’s coming-of-age feature debut Young Hearts, scheduled for June 21 at the Palace of Fine Arts and followed by the First Friday Gala at Terra Gallery.
There are too many full-length narratives, shorts and documentaries — and quite a few with Bay Area connections — to list them all here. But the Frameline curators meticulously scoured over 1,600 submissions and invitations to bring together a wide-ranging cinematic salute to LGBTQ+ people, their struggles, and their triumphs.
Frameline 48: daily through June 29, various Bay Area locations.
