Experience

The world of "Derek" at Frameline32

It goes without saying that sexuality is never far from the surface of Derek Jarman’s films, something he himself is clear enough accounting for in the lengthy 1990 interview which forms the backbone of Isaac Julien’s documentary portrait Derek. Over the sepia, postwar home movies that Jarman worked into films like The Last of England (1988), the artist recounts getting caught in bed with a boy during prep school and being "raked over the coals" for it—something which caused him to redirect any sexual energy he had into painting and collecting into his twenties, and later persisted in the vacuum-sealed air of solitary fixation in which his films seemed to play out. Later, accompanying shots of nubile lads and Scorpio Rising (1964) leather, Jarman emphasizes his desire to have sex in public as a kind of a revenge on the society which would repress his desires—a neat enough corollary for the let-it-blurt axiom of his serviceable film style. This contrast between amour fou and a rigid sense of self-preservation rivets Jarman’s collected works, though you wouldn’t necessarily know it from Derek, a documentary tribute which does not seek to enlarge or complicate the filmmaker’s legacy so much as succor its loss.

topics: art film, directors, documentary, experimental film, film festivals, frameline, gay lesbian cinema, queer cinema

Critic's Notebook

Frameline32: Hot and handled

Opening weekend at the SF International LGBT Film Festival was hot—particularly in that, if you didn’t notice, we had a heatwave goin’ on. Frameline’s current three venues for the annual event are all old movie palaces (OK, I’m not sure how old the Roxie is, but it sure ain’t palacial), none air-conditioned.

Of course it was hot in a good way, too, from the audience members (memo to self: Stop playing hooky from gym immediately) to what was onscreen. Starting with opening night’s selection—what could be hotter than repressed Victorians perspiring lust through their corsets?

topics: directors, documentary, film festivals, frameline, gay lesbian cinema, independent film, queer cinema

Platform

Ruby Yang, "A Double Life" and a double feature

Ruby Yang’s A Double Life, also known as Tongzhi in Love, is boasting its West Coast premiere at Frameline32, screening with Yang’s Oscar-winning documentary short The Blood of Yingzhou District on Saturday, June 28, 2:30PM at the Roxie Film Center. Although unable to attend the festival proper, SF360 caught up with Ruby Yang during a recent Bay Area visit to discuss what’s been called her "latest and most lyrical film yet."

In 2003, noted Chinese American filmmaker Ruby Yang, in collaboration with producer Thomas Lennon, formed The China Aids Media Project (CAMP) to promote public health in China through film, television and other visual media. Fully committed to CAMP, Yang moved to Beijing, China—where she currently resides and works—directing documentaries and public service announcements (PSAs).

topics: asian american cinema, documentary, political film, q&a, queer cinema

Experience

Frameline rides Argentina's new wave

Last year’s Frameline First Feature Award winner was Alexis Dos Santos’ debut Glue (2006), an overall festival favorite, and one that SF Bay Guardian Arts and Entertainment Editor Johnny Ray Huston wryly observed as "yet another example of how new Argentine cinema […] continues to stretch the time and space dimensions of the word new." It had already been a half decade since 2001, Argentine film’s watershed year at film festivals abroad and the year the entire industry—and country—suffered through a catastrophic economic collapse. The state-subsidized film schools that had nurtured members of the ’90s new wave were forced to close and many in the film industry fretted over what seemed like a foreclosed future.

topics: argentine cinema, frameline, gay lesbian cinema, queer cinema

Platform

Strand's Marcus Hu and Frameline's Michael Lumpkin

[Editor’s note: With Frameline Artistic Director Michael Lumpkin leaving his post after this year’s San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival, SF360.org felt it appropriate to ask an equally storied figure in LGBT film to help mark the occasion. Strand Releasing President Marcus Hu graciously agreed to speak with his old friend Lumpkin about Frameline, queer cinema and the future of this niche festival.]

I’ve worked with Michael Lumpkin from the very inception of our company back in 1989. When Strand Releasing didn’t even have a name yet, and was based out of the Strand Theatre on Market Street, and we didn’t have any funds, Michael figured out way of getting our first film, Lino Brocka’s Macho Dancer secured, helped to take care of the print shipment, helped to deal with the funding necessary to pay Mr. Brocka for the rental. Michael has done so much for GLBT filmmakers, distributors both domestic and globally, that I don’t know how an organization such a Frameline will be able to find another figure head such as him. For me, Michael has seen the rise and fall of the New Queer Cinema, he’s helped bring Vito Russo’s vision to celluloid with Rob and Jeff [Epstein and Friedman]. When Michael started the festival, he was working with short films and a few spare features that might have featured gay content and a few years back he was bringing Ang Lee in to present the San Francisco premiere of Brokeback Mountain. He’s seen the evolution of GLBT cinema and hopefully will still be involved in some degree to our industry.

LGBT cinema owes a lot to Michael’s dedication.

topics: distributors, documentary film institute, exhibitions, experimental film, film festivals, gay lesbian cinema, q&a, queer cinema

Report

Frameline announces program for 32nd SFLGBT Festival

The historically rich Castro Theatre—with its marquee recently revamped for the Milk biopic shoot—hosted Frameline’s announcements of its program for the annual San Francisco International Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Film Festival Tuesday morning. In its 32nd year, the festival runs June 19-29 at the Castro, Roxie and Victoria theaters in San Francisco, and the Elmwood in Berkeley. It opens with Affinity, based on Sarah Waters’ 1999 novel, a film Festival Artistic Director Michael Lumpkin described as a "same-sex bodice ripper." Its closing night film, the Canadian Breakfast with Scot, mixes homosexuality and hockey a story about raising a child. The Centerpiece screening at the festival is XXY, a piece of Argentinian New Cinema, which follows last year’s juried prize-winner Glue in pointing south toward a LGBT-filmmaking hotspot.

topics: film festivals, gay lesbian cinema, political film, queer cinema

Take Two

Review: "The Living End," remixed and remastered

What to think about attitudes toward and images of gays in U.S. media these days? It’s a complicated question. On one hand, clearly there have been enormous advances. Not so long ago, who could have imagined shows like The L Word or Will & Grace being long-running mainstream hits? Ellen and Rosie and such are beloved by housewives across America. Brokeback Mountain won Oscars—though not the big one, in what many speculated was a failure of nerve on the part of older Academy voters who simply didn’t want to watch it.

Yet Brokeback did not open the floodgates for gay-themed Hollywood projects as predicted, the studios regarding its success as a fluke. (We’ll see if Ang Lee’s upcoming gay-perspective Woodstock movie or Gus Van Sant’s Harvey Milk bio changes their minds.)

topics: bay area, dvd, queer cinema