Critic's Notebook

Frameline33: Icons and unsung heroes

"What do they want from an old dinosaur like me?" quips John Hurt, reprising his career-making role as Quentin Crisp, in response to an invitation to regale a much younger audience about his life. By this point in An Englishman in New York, Richard Laxton’s sequel to The Naked Civil Servant (1975) and this year’s opening night film at Frameline33, Crisp has been branded a black sheep for refusing to retract flip comments made on the then-emerging AIDS crisis and is still adjusting to the slights that come with being perceived as some living relic of the past. To a large degree, the image of Crisp as a stoic holdover from an earlier age of faeries and rough trade who survived on wit and sheer force of will was one of his own making, and it is certainly a reputation that Claxton’s film helps secure.

topics: audiences, avant-garde, bay area, british cinema, documentary, filmmakers, frameline, gay lesbian cinema, genre films, queer cinema, sf international lgbt film festival, world cinema

In Production

Champagne's chilling for Leban and Szajko's gay-marriage doc

When the California Supreme Court rules whether to let Prop. 8 stand, Lexi Leban and Lidia Szajko will have a front-row seat to history. It’s more likely the S.F. filmmakers will be on their feet, cameras in hand, recording the moment for their forthcoming documentary. Tentatively titled Winter of Love, it uses the legal battle as a framework for both an individual and big-picture look at the increasing acceptance of gay marriage.

A few months before the court agreed to hear oral arguments in the spring of 2008 for In re Marriage Cases, the proceeding that led to the 4-3 ruling that revoked the ban on same-sex betrothals, Maya Scott Chung from Marriage Equality USA asked the filmmakers if they’d be willing to tape interviews with some of the plaintiff couples. "They just had a feeling this would be a historical moment and their stories deserved to be recorded in some way other than declarations in a Supreme Court document," Szajko recalls.

topics: bay area, digital filmmaking, directors, documentary, documentary film, filmmakers, gay lesbian cinema, independent film, queer cinema, women filmmakers

Take Two

"Otto:" A zombie movie with heart, soul and plot

Sheer show-off brattiness can be attractive as it manifests in a young filmmaker’s works—but not so much if the filmmaker fails to mature in sensibility along with his or her escalating age. This has been a particular problem with certain figures in the ’80s Amerindie breakthrough, who still amuse and sometimes enthrall, but rarely get past cineaste in-jokery and prankish shock value to convey some real depth of artistic (or simply human) perspective.

topics: film history, filmmakers, frameline, queer cinema, reviews

Platform

New at Frameline: K.C. Price

For a large chunk of Frameline’s 32 years of existence, Michael Lumpkin captained the preeminent San Francisco queer media arts organization. When he departed to forge new trails at the conclusion of this year’s S.F. International LGBT Film Festival, the board picked K.C. Price to take over as executive director. Price was the managing director of the Ninth Street Independent Film Center, the building that houses Frameline and several other local film organizations, and his resume includes stints as the development director at Frameline and the STOP AIDS Project. Price’s fundraising experience should be an asset amid a spiraling recession that’s expected to roil nonprofit arts groups in the coming year. We met the new guy in the Frameline offices last week to find out what was on his plate.

topics: castro theatre, directors, documentary, experimental film, features, festivals, film arts foundation, frameline, gay lesbian cinema, queer cinema

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