Out There :: Monarch Butterflies

Frameline folks are all jazzed up about the upcoming San Francisco International LGBTQ Film Festival, June 16-26. It's the 40th edition, so the film fest has a fresh new look, with sleek graphics, a new logo, and a winning tag-line: The King of Queer Film Festivals. We bow down.

Frameline is the longest-running, largest LGBTQ film fest in the world, so we feel that King. Although perhaps Queen would have been more fitting? With 155 films from over 24 countries, Frameline40 does have regal ambitions. Presenters are proud that 40% of the offerings were made by women directors, and 50% of the documentaries. This year the fest expands to a full week of programs in the East Bay.

Opening night brings "Kiki," from directors Sara Jordeno and Twiggy Pucci Garcon. An updating of the seminal queer doc "Paris Is Burning," "Kiki" explores today's ballroom scene of LGBTQ youth of color in NYC. The centerpiece documentary "Southwest of Salem: The Story of the San Antonio Four" (director: Deborah Ezquenazi) profiles four Latina lesbians who were wrongfully convicted of sexual assault in the 1990s. All four women will appear at the screening. Social justice themes also resonate in "Growing Up Coy" (director: Eric Juhola), in which six-year-old Coy upholds transgender rights in a small Colorado town.

Retrospective programs include "Flashback 1977: Frameline's Founding Year," which will present director Artie Bressan, Jr.'s pioneering Gay Pride doc Gay USA and a campy short by Marc Huestis, "Miracle on Sunset Boulevard," which screened at that very first "Gay Film Festival of Super 8 Films."

We're promised a vintage year for debut features, including director Deb Shoval's AWOL, director Ingrid Jungermann's "Women Who Kill," director Andrew Ahn's "Spa Night" and writer-director-star Clea Duvall's "The Intervention" (Duvall and "Orange Is the New Black"'s Natasha Lyonne will appear in person at the screening).

Lovers of fashion, costumes and queer style will eat up both "Suited," from director Jason Benjamin, and directors Ester Gould and Reijer Zwaan's "Strike a Pose," which revisits dancers from Madonna's 1990 "Blond Ambition" tour. Five of the voguers will appear at the Castro Theatre screening, on that big party night formerly known as Pink Saturday. Film-fest folk modestly propose a new name for the evening: Frameline Saturday?

There's much more on tap, such as the full-body animal-costumed "Furries" (director Eric Risher) in the "Only in San Francisco" program; director Marlon T. Riggs' 1989 "Tongues Untied"; and director Philip Ford's 1991 "Vegas in Space." This year's Frameline Award will go to independent film mentor, muse and "film whisperer" Bob Hawk, with a screening of directors JJ Garvine and Tai Parquet 's Film Hawk. There will be films from Myanmar, India, Slovakia, China, and the Intuit nation in Canada, as well as from strange backwaters of these United States.

Closing night brings director Andrew Haigh's closing installment of the "Looking" series, with our fictional SF buddies Patrick (Jonathan Groff ), Agustin (Frankie J. Alvarez ) and Dom (Murray Bartlett ). The "Looking" boys are all invited to the Oasis afterparty, which will also feature a performance by performers from the current revival of Cabaret, featuring Randy Harrison (Queer As Folk ).

Protestors outside last week's press conference at Oasis demanded that Frameline stop cooperating with the government of Israel, despite the fact that, for the second year running, there are no Israeli films in the festival. Look, we're no supporters of the current right-wing Israeli government, but we really have to wonder about the vehemence of these boycotters. Somehow they are never protesting Frameline films from China, Turkey, Arab nations or Russia, all of whose governments are also, like Israel, guilty of heinous military interventions and terrible oppression of constituent ethnic groups. The protestors insist they're not anti-Semitic, but somehow it's only the Jewish state that gets the brunt of their critique. By their logic, why not boycott films from the greatest source of militarized violence and the biggest arms dealer on the planet, the U.S.? Just askin'.

Fairy Fun

Opera Queen: "This is the program cover for the Glyndebourne 2016 season. No one can believe it."

Out There: "Is there some sort of fairy sodomite picnic opera on this year's roster? Highlarious!"

Opera Queen: "No! Isn't that amazing? Everyone's just gaga. I mean, as you probably know, European opera brochures are books, and often with only the most fanciful connections to the repertoire being promoted. But for formal dress al fresco Glyndebourne, this is - well, what?"

Correction box: An item about Jane Wyman in last week's Out There was erroneously illustrated with a picture of Jane Wyatt, who played the mother opposite Robert Young on TV's long-running "Father Knows Best."We're dumb with regret for the error.