Frameline has huge plans for its landmark 50th film festival, and there’s no bigger example of that than a 25-foot tall Hunky Jesus.
The nation’s oldest and largest LGBTQ+ media arts organization’s flagship event will open June 17 at the Castro with the West Coast premiere of former San Francisco drag laureate D’Arcy Drollinger’s comedy “Lady Champagne,” a sequel to 2020’s “S— and Champagne” shot entirely in the city.
Its centerpiece film, also at the Castro on June 25, is the West Coast premiere of “Barbara Forever,” Brydie O’Connor’s outstanding celebration of the late pioneering lesbian filmmaker Barbara Hammer, who was based in the Bay Area early in her career and helped establish independent LGBTQ+ filmmaking.
“San Francisco doesn’t just watch films, we make them, break them open, and remake them in our own image,” said Frameline Executive Director Allegra Madsen in a statement Tuesday, April 28. “These three films are San Francisco stories about the artists, the activists, the drag queens, the dykes and the queers who built this city’s culture and dared to put it on screen.”
Tickets for the three special nights are on sale at Frameline.org.
The rest of the program for the June 17-27 event, which takes place in venues in San Francisco, Berkeley and Oakland, will be announced May 13.
This year’s event officially makes Frameline the first LGBTQ+-themed film festival to reach a half-century. To celebrate, a festival hub and box office opens May 14 at the former Hamburger Mary’s at 531 Castro St. The move also coincides with the festival’s return to the newly renovated Castro Theatre.
“That Frameline gets to open its 50th year (at Hamburger Mary’s) and at the Castro, feels less like coincidence and more like destiny,” Madsen said. “Fifty years in, Frameline is still history in the making.”