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Press Releases:
Asian Films
Awards
Conference
Distribution
Latino Films
Music Films
Overview of Festival
François Ozon
Spirituality Films
Sponsors
Youth Films
Wrap
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PRESS
Young, Out and Proud — Frameline30 is Queer Fountain of Youth
San Francisco, CA—The easily recognizable prevalence of queer youth–based films in Frameline30 reflects the increasing visibility of today’s young LGBT community, a group more determined to be seen and heard than ever before. 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.
Youth-centered Festival features run the gamut in their portrayal of angst-filled adolescents struggling with their identities. Charles Busch’s comedy-drama, A Very Serious Person, is a heartwarming coming-of-age tale about a boy obsessed with old Hollywood and his enigmatic Danish mentor. In Richard Wong’s Colma: The Musical, restless teenagers express their heartache and desperation through music. Director Justin Lo’s The Conrad Boys is a heartfelt tale of identity, family, youthful freedom and the allure of first love. Cam Archer’s experimental film, Wild Tigers I Have Known, conjures up the desperate intensity and mysticism of first love and sexual awakening. Ash Christian’s Fat Girls focuses on a gay, theater-obsessed high school senior who has his heart set on Broadway stardom. Katherine Brooks’ Loving Annabelle portrays a steamy lesbian boarding-school romance. Simon Chung’s Innocent is the story of a vulnerable teen’s approach to the brink of adulthood. Innocent explores the story of Eric, a 17-year-old who reluctantly migrates with his parents from Hong Kong to Toronto. Emmanuelle Bercot’s stunning feature directorial debut, Backstage, traces a starstruck teenager’s fixation on a gorgeous and enigmatic pop star diva.
Documentaries about queer youth include Katherine Linton’s Follow My Voice: With the Music of Hedwig, in which musicians gather to record music from the movie Hedwig and the Angry Inch to benefit New York’s Harvey Milk High School, which serves gay, lesbian and transgender youth. Directors Kirk Marcolina and Larry Grimaldi’s Camp Out is a lively documentary about the first overnight Bible Camp for Young, Gay Christian or Questioning Christians (YGCQCs). Fawn Yacker’s Ugly Ducklings shows us the staging of an award-winning play, which deals with bias-based harassment and youth suicide. In Breaking the Silence: LGBT Foster Youth Tell Their Stories, a group of former youths who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer come together for a workshop at the Center for Digital Storytelling in Berkeley. Also screening is Queer Spawn, which features Christopher, 12 (two gay dads, New York City), and Kyle, 15 (two lesbian moms, Austin, Texas), and other children being raised by LGBT parents.
Features from around the world make up several of the Festival’s youth-based films. 50 Ways of Saying Fabulous, from internationally acclaimed New Zealand director Stewart Main, is a
refreshing look at sexual awakening. Mexican director Julian Hernandez' second feature, Broken Sky, is a beautiful love story between two gay students that won the Teddy award at Berlinale. From France, Bernard Alapetite and Cyril Legann’s Like A Brother is the portrait of a young man torn between boyish love and manly passion. From Austria comes Michael Satzinger’s Whispering Moon, about a pair of techno rebels living in a world of paranoia and conspiracy theories. Amnon Buchbinder’s second feature, Whole New Thing, is an unconventional coming-of-age story of an exceptional thirteen-year-old boy who is home-schooled by his eco-hippie parents in the wilds of Nova Scotia.
A number of youth-focused shorts highlight the Festival this year, including Boys School, Crush, Family Ties, Inciting Hope—Queer Women of Color Shorts, and Small Town Girls. Do It Yourself—New Youth Films, which showcases a collection of youth-made films from around the Bay Area. Jennifer Gilomen’s Queer Youth Speak: In and Out at the Library follows two young people as they discover the queer past and add their voices to the history they witness. Ethan van Thillo and Johanna Malaret’s documentary, Altared Lives, follows LGBTQ teens as they explore religion, family, culture and sexuality. ericka sokolowershain’s Where Have We Been All This Time?, made through the Wells Fargo/Frameline Young Filmmaker Workshop, depicts the lives of passengers briefly intersecting on a BART train. Concluding this exciting youth-focused program is Juliana Spector’s Stainless, in which a queer teenager stains her clothes and must find a way to come out to her parents without her lucky shirt. Sven J. Matten’s Out Now, a short film about being a homosexual teenager in Bavaria, plays in the program Boys School. With some help from Barbie, a young misfit finally gets her revenge on a schoolyard bully in You’re Dead After School.A self-described “short soft smut film,” School Boy Art follows a cute, graffi-sketchin’ Angelino as he tries to get into art school. Things I’ll Never Say captures the spark of desire that transforms the friendships and tangled yearnings of three Asian teenagers.
An additional festival treat in store this year for queer families with kids (as well as without kids) is the Family Film Matinee screening a time-honored favorite, The Many Adventures Of Winnie The Pooh. Directed by John Lounsbery and Wolfgang Reitherman in 1977, the distinctly ‘60s-style animation is fun to watch and the voices of Sterling Holloway, Paul Winchell, Sebastian Cabot and Timothy Turner are a sheer delight.
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 |
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