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PRESS
Frameline30 Audience Honors The Gymnast for Best Feature, The Believers For Best Documentary and Irene Williams: Queen Of Lincoln Road For Best Short
Stray Cats Receives the $10,000 Dockers First Feature Award
Cruel and Unusual Receives the $10,000 Michael J. Berg Documentary Award
Frameline30, the 30th San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival, the world’s oldest and largest LGBT film festival, closed Sunday, June 25 with a gala screening of Manuel Gómez Pereira’s Queens. The Frameline30 Festival had nearly 62,000 total attendees. This year, the Festival presented screenings at the Castro Theatre, CinéArts@Empire, Roxie Film Center, Victoria Theatre in San Francisco and the Parkway Theater in Oakland. At Sunday night’s Closing Night Party, Frameline30 organizers announced the recipients of the Festival’s Audience Awards, the $10,000 Dockers® First Feature Award, and the $10,000 Michael J. Berg Documentary Award.
The Audience Award for Best Feature was given to Ned Farr’s The Gymnast, a drama about a former gymnast in her forties discovering a new life and a new love in the world of aerial dancing. The film also took the Best US Narrative Feature Award at New York’s Newfest earlier this month. The Audience Award for Best Documentary was given to Todd Holland for The Believers, an inspiring look at the world’s first transgendered gospel choir. Eric Smith’s Irene Williams: Queen of Lincoln Road won the Audience Award for Best Short Film. This was the twelfth award this year for the engaging short that looks at the friendship between the filmmaker and an elderly icon of Miami’s Lincoln Road neighborhood.
The juried $10,000 Dockers® First Feature Award recognized Ellen Ongkeko-Marfil’s Stray Cats (Pusang gala), a daring and innovative independent film from the Philippines about the parallel love lives of a straight woman and her gay neighbor. The Dockers® jury consisted of three esteemed film industry representatives: film director Cheryl Dunye (Watermelon Woman, Stranger Inside), Adam Werbach, president of Ironweed Films, and Carol Coombes, Co-director of the Miami Gay & Lesbian Film Festival.
The Michael J. Berg Documentary Award, a $10,000 juried award recognizing the best documentary feature having its Bay Area premiere at the Festival, was given to Janet Baus, Dan Hunt and Reid Williams’ Cruel and Unusual, an eye-opening look at transgender women placed in men’s correctional facilities. The award jury included youth filmmaker and American University student Harjant Gill, documentary filmmaker Sasha Aickin (Blood, Sweat, and Glitter), as well as Melbourne Queer Film Festival Director, Lisa Daniel.
On Opening Night, the Festival celebrated its 30th Anniversary with a gala screening of Maria Maggenti’s Puccini for Beginners, a hilarious tale about a girl who can’t say yes—to love. Maria Maggenti was on hand at the screening of her film and delighted the audience with her humor, wit and charm and delighted us with her company staying through to the end of the after party. The Opening Night Gala was held at San Francisco Design Center Galleria, which was decorated in red and black lighting, fabrics and floral arrangements, with four floors of sumptuous morsels and refreshing libations.
Frameline30 closed with Manuel Gómez Pereira’s Queens at the Castro Theatre and a celebration at San Francisco Design Center Galleria. The film, a queer screwball comedy about a mass public wedding staged to celebrate Spain’s legalization of same-sex marriage, was met with rapturous applause and laughs. At the swanky post-film party, the festival awards were announced by Frameline30 programmers Michael Lumpkin and Jennifer Morris, and gala attendees were treated to performances by the illustrious brood of queer, vigilante vaudevillian teasers, the Diamond Daggers.
The 2006 Frameline Award was presented to French director François Ozon. Over the past decade, the Film Festival has screened seven of Ozon’s films, and he last attended the Festival in 2000 with Criminal Lovers and Water Drops on Burning Rocks. Ozon presented his latest film, Time to Leave, which stars Melvil Poupaud and screen legend Jeanne Moreau. Time to Leave was also the Centerpiece Presentation of Frameline30.
Frameline30 also welcomed eleven World Premiere feature films. The Believers, an inspiring documentary on the world’s first transgender gospel choir and recipient of a 2005 Frameline Film & Video Completion Fund grant, received a rousing and lengthy standing ovation at its premier at the Castro Theatrer. ¡El Presidente!, a film about an incredibly strange Mexican election campaign premiered at the Mission district’s Roxie Film Center. Flirting with Anthony, the story of a former young criminal who has restarted his life, was presented by its leather-clad director Christian Calson. In a sold out Victoria Theatre, FtF: Female to Femme explored the cause and expression of their identity in this revealing doc. Attending out of drag, San Francisco’s own Kinsey Sicks witnessed the premier of their concert film of their hit show in The Kinsey Sicks: I Wanna Be a Republican. Local filmmaker-impresario Marc Huestis presented his latest film, Lulu Gets a Facelift, which documents drag diva Lulu as she goes under the knife in quest of eternal youth and beauty. the sex movie, a story of four friends who settle in for a dark night of down-and-dirty duking it out over issues of sexuality was well received by an appreciative audience. Take the Flame! Gay Games: Grace, Grit & Glory, inspired Festival attendees with a documentary on the Gay Games, narrated by Olympic gold medalist Greg Louganis and featuring Billy Bean, Armistead Maupin and Martina Navratilova. Rolling up in style complete with red carpet, limo were the stars of Trantasia, who came to the screening of their documentary about MTF contestants from around the world who vie for the crown in evening gown, swimsuit and talent competitions in this unforgettable chronicle of the first World’s Most Beautiful Transsexual Pageant. Vice & Consent offered a fascinating look at the luminaries of San Francisco’s BDSM community telling the uncensored truth about their misunderstood lifestyle. The San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus took to the stage and treated the audience with their velvety voices at the screening Why We Sing! a documentary about LGBT choral groups from around the world.
Over 450 guests from the Bay Area, the United States and around the world attended Frameline30 and the Persistent Vision Conference. Notable guests included: Queer Duck: The Movie creator Mike Reiss; star of The Gymnast, Dreya Weber; Lorene Machado, director of Bam Bam and Celeste; Academy Award winner Freida Lee Mock of Wrestling with Angels: Playwright Tony Kushner; Charles Busch, director and star of A Very Serious Person; Paper Dolls director Tomer Heymann; Christian Calson, director of Flirting With Anthony; Ash Christian, director and star of Fat Girls; director Stewart Main of 50 Ways of Saying Fabulous; Justin Lo, star and director of The Conrad Boys; Boy Culture director Allan Brocka; documentary director Katherine Linton of Follow My Voice: With the Music of Hedwig; Dirty Laundry director Maurice Jamal; from the UK Rag Tag director Adaora Nwandu; Glenn Holsten director of Saint of 9/11; and Canadian directors Denis Langlois (AMNESIA-The James Brighton Enigma), Jean-François Monette and Philip Lewis (Eye on the Guy: Alan B. Stone & the Age of Beefcake), Amnon Buchbinder (Whole New Thing), and Malcolm Ingram (small town gay bar).
Of the 144 scheduled programs in the Festival, 20 were sold out. Sold-out features included 20 Centimeters, FtF: Female to Femme, The Mostly Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green, Another Gay Movie, Innocent, 101 Must-See Movies For Gay Men, Like a Brother, Fabulous! The Story of Queer Cinema, Crush, Yours Emotionally, Colma: The Musical, Sun Kissed, Red Doors, Broken Sky, Eleven Men Out, Strangers With Candy, Unveiled, A Love to Hide, The Favor and Bam Bam and Celeste.
During the 30th Anniversary Festival Frameline also hosted Persistent Vision 2006, a four day gathering of scholars, journalists and film industry professionals looking at the state of LGBT cinema. The conference was opened with a keynote address by B. Ruby Rich, and Keith Boykin addressed conference attendees on June 21st and joined actor/writer/producer/director John Cameron Mitchell and Frameline Executive Director Michael Lumpkin for a discussion with Conference attendees to close the four-day event. Other notable Conference panelists include Logo’s Maureen Guthman; producers Effie Brown and Stephen Israel; directors Malcolm Ingram, Cheryl Dunye, Jamie Babbit, Angela Robinson, Rodney Evans and Parvez Sharma; writer/actor Guinevere Turner, and HBO attorney Steve Sass.
Frameline30: the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival, screened 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.
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 |
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