By: Lucas Fink By: Lucas Fink | June 8, 2022 | People Parties Culture Art Events Movies Entertainment
We’re now fresh off the heels of the 2022 San Francisco International Film Festival, wherein the legendary likes of Michelle Yeoh, Chrissy Metz, and Sandra Oh graced the halls of the historic Castro Theater (check out our coverage of the event here).
The Spring and Summer seasons of 2022 are proving to be a Bay Area film geek’s wonderland, for, just a month and half following the SF International Film Festival, the San Francisco International LGBTQ+ Film Festival will touch down on June 16th with almost 2 weeks worth of new-release film screenings (for which the Castro Theater will serve as a primary venue). Founded in 1977 and organized by the queer media arts nonprofit Frameline, the SF LGBTQ+ Film Festival is the largest and longest-running queer cinema event in the world. In addition to the festival, Frameline operates as the world’s only nonprofit film distributor dedicated exclusively to queer voices in cinema.
With roughly 90 films on the itinerary and a plethora of other Pride events slated for the latter half of this month, we hope this list of some of the festival’s most promising titles helps narrow your options and streamline your June schedule.
A League of Their Own - dir. Jamie Babbit
June 16th / Castro Theater
A highly anticipated new Amazon Prime Video series, A League of Their Own is a modernized reimagining of the 1992 feminist classic of the same name. Centering on a generation of young women whose aspiration is to break into the male-dominated field of professional baseball, this re-telling of the sports-drama will differentiate itself from the original by probing the thematics of sexuality and race in addition to gender. Catch the first two episodes of the series at the Castro Theater on June 16th as well as an on-stage Q/A with some very special guests after the screening.
Queer as Folk - dir. Stephen Dunn
June 17th / Castro Theater
Another eagerly awaited streamable show, this Peacock original series will foreground the joys and follies of a culturally and sexually heterogeneous friend-group in New Orleans who must navigate the wake of a recent tragedy. After the first two episodes are screened, stick around for an on-stage conversation with key members of the ensemble cast as well as the show’s writer, director, and creator himself, Stephen Dunn.
June 18th / Roxie Theatre
One of the few documentaries premiering at the festival, this powerful Canadian-produced film weaves together three real-life stories of queer folk who are forced to negotiate the difficult, ambiguous space between their sexuality and their traditional South Asian upbringing. Challenging but ultimately optimistic, this examination of the too-often overlooked intersection of cultural and sexual identity proves stories needn’t be fictional to be affecting. In attendance at the Roxie Theatre will be the film’s director, Vinay Giridhar.
June 19th / AMC Kabuki 8
Making its United States premier at the Kabuki in San Francisco’s Japantown, this absurdist, blackly comic indie flick follows the exploits of a gay man and a sex worker as they navigate the American countryside on a surreal, dreamlike roadtrip. One of the lead actors will join the director, Juan Felipe Zuleta, at the premier of what is sure to become an indie cult classic.
June 23rd / The New Parkway
One of the standout titles at the SXSW Film Festival, Sissy updates the Stephen King horror classic Carrie for the social media age and introduces a darkly humorous spin. Oscillating between campy gruesomeness and witty, acerbic dialogue, don’t miss this comedy-horror gorefest screening at Oakland’s hip indie film venue The New Parkway.
June 24th / The Castro Theater
This Finland-produced flick tracks the lives of three young women and their tempestuous navigation of love, friendship, and loss of innocence, all with a decidedly queer bent. Having just snagged the prestigious Sundance Film Festival’s audience award, this drama is well on its way to becoming one of the year’s most acclaimed foreign features.
June 26th / The Castro Theater
Renowned French cinema visionary Francois Ozon helmed this provocative tale of repressed romantic longing, which itself is a gender-reversed re-telling of the seminal 1972 New German queer melodrama The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Fassbinder’s utterly remarkable filmography was cut tragically short by an overdose at 37. In his time as a director, though, he managed to become one of the most respected, politically subversive, and prolific filmmakers of all time, all while living openly as a queer man. It makes sense, then, that Fassbinder is one of Ozon’s heroes. Thankfully, the festival is also screening the Fassbinder classic three days earlier (June 23rd) at the Castro.
Check out the full calendar with all of the festival’s screenings here.
See also: Liminal Space Is San Francisco's New Trans-Centering Gallery
Photography by: Ketut Subiyanto/Pexels
