| |
Press Releases:
Asian Films
Awards
Conference
Distribution
Latino Films
Music Films
Overview of Festival
François Ozon
Spirituality Films
Sponsors
Youth Films
Wrap
|
PRESS
Frameline30 Serves Up Panoply of Latino Films at This Year’s
San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival
SAN FRANCISCO—Features from the United States and abroad, and some spicy local shorts, make up some of the Latino highlights of Frameline30, the 30th San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival. This year’s Festival runs June 15-25 at the historic Castro Theatre, CinéArts@Empire, Roxie Film Center and the Victoria Theatre in San Francisco, as well as at Oakland’s Parkway Theater.
Queens will screen on Closing Night at the Castro Theatre, wrapping up Frameline30’s stellar 11-day run. Director Manuel Gómez Pereira’s Queens centers on Spain’s first mass same-sex wedding. Bringing together the grand dames of Spanish cinema including Verónica Forqué, Carmen Maura and Marisa Paredes, Queens is the story of five headstrong mothers coping with the drama that surrounds the wedding of their gay sons.
In 20 Centimeters, Veteran Spanish filmmaker Ramón Salazar draws upon the conventions of the over-the-top Hollywood musical to tell the raw, dramatic and often hilarious story of Marieta (Mónica Cervera), an unforgettable transvestite with transsexual dreams and a “20-centimeter problem”. Salazar sympathetically presents a memorable cast of sexual outlaws who’ve “all got talent but don’t have the money to develop it.” Featuring the music of Queen, Madonna and Ani DiFranco, 20 Centimeters just might steal the “most outrageous musical” crown from Yes Nurse! No Nurse!
Mexican director Julián Hernández dazzles the senses with his second feature, Broken Sky. Tracing the thrills and pains of young love with bravura technique and utter conviction, Hernández follows his A Thousand Clouds of Peace with another gay fantasy awash in romanticism, sexual abandon and the despair of longing.
João Pedro Rodrigues’ Two Drifters starts with a passionate kiss, a techno version of “Moon River” and a car crash, and ends with one of the most shocking sex scenes in recent memory. This second feature by the brazenly talented Portuguese director of O Fantasma plumbs the depths of romantic obsession. Driven by an eclectic soundtrack featuring Bright Eyes, a muzak version of Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” and Holly Golightly’s signature tune, Two Drifters is an edgy ode to dreammakers and heartbreakers.
Meet the residents of Juchitán, Mexico, a queer paradise with a thriving mix of drag queens, transsexuals, gays and straights, in Muxes: Authentic, Intrepid, Seekers of Danger. This
documentary traces the experience of the indigenous queer men living there, working to maintain their pride and heritage as both homosexual men and Zapotec Indians.
In What’s Up, Scarlet?, Scarlet Zabrinski (Susan Priver) is a workaholic L.A. matchmaker whose harried life gets even more complicated when she’s rear-ended by Sabrina (Musetta Vander), a homeless actress. Touched by Sabrina’s apparent helplessness, Scarlet offers her a place to stay for the night — and opens a Pandora’s box of comic complications.
In Fernando López Escriva’s Hotel Gondolín, a group of transgender women in Buenos Aires take over a hotel and picket city hall. In this vibrantly painted former hotel, transgender women are taking control of their lives by creating a safe place for themselves.
In the lesbian feature film from Argentina, The Favor (directed by Pablo Sofovich), Mora (Bernarda Pagés) and Roberta (Victoria Onetto) are a young, happy and hot lesbian couple. They have it all, including great careers and an amazing house. The one thing they still want? A baby! Will the couple succeed in their quest for Roberta to seduce Felipe? Or should they switch to a no-strings-attached back-up plan involving Felipe’s partner, an old man who may or may not have just dropped dead? Only time will tell.
In addition to an array of outstanding feature films, Frameline30 presents a variety of excellent Latino short films in the Festival this year. They include: Serve Thy Master, in which a traditional Latina housewife has a smoldering epiphany; Amy Andre’s On My Skin/En Mi Piel, which follows Logan, a light-skinned man of mixed heritage who journeys to his ancestral Mexican homeland to search for connection with family on the cusp of his gender transition; Trantasia, a documentary on the first World’s Most Beautiful Transsexual Pageant; Bañales, documenting the San Francisco writer/poet Meliza Bañales, her hell-raising performance and her thoughts on dykes, trannies, Bukowski and pimping poetry.
Frameline30: the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival, screening June 15–25 at the Castro Theatre (429 Castro Street), CinéArts@Empire (85 West Portal Avenue), Roxie Film Center (3117 16th Street), Victoria Theatre (2961 16th Street) in San Francisco and the Parkway Theater (1834 Park Blvd.) in Oakland.
Advance tickets will be available at the Festival Ticket Outlet located at 474 Castro Street in San Francisco. The Ticket Outlet will be open for Frameline Members only from May 26th through June 1st. General public ticket sales begin on June 2nd. Tickets may also be purchased by phone (925.866.9559), fax (925.866.9597), or mail (Frameline30, P.O. Box 2229, Danville, CA 94526-7229). For more information on the Festival and how to purchase tickets call the 24-hour hotline at 925.866.9559 or visit http://www.frameline.org/festival.
The San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival is presented by Frameline, a nonprofit LGBT organization whose mission is to strengthen the diverse lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community and further its visibility by supporting and promoting a broad array of cultural representations and artistic expression in film, video and other media arts.
Media contact:
Seema Arora
seema@frameline.org
415.703.8650 x323 |
|
