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HERBST THEATRE
ROXIE THEATRE
VOGUE THEATRE
NEW PARKWAY THEATRE
TONI REMBE THEATRE
KQED HQ
A CALL TO ACTION
Dear Friends,
Welcome to the 49th iteration of the Frameline San Francisco International LGBTQ+ Film Festival. To state it in polite terms, 2025 has been a year. With the onslaught of attacks on our identities, our bodies, our arts, language, and history, it’s easy to feel like we are in uncharted territory. Approaching Frameline's 50th Anniversary has drawn me to explore our organization's legacy in shaping queer narratives and representation.
I am reminded that the past and our connection to it is a crucial roadmap for understanding ourselves and building our future. By examining our history, I have found striking parallels that give me hope. They remind us that we have fought these battles before and we can fight them again.
One such parallel is the following letter penned in 1990 by Audre Lorde, Chrystos, and Minnie Bruce Pratt. These lesbian writers spoke out against censorship, reiterating how crucial queer stories are to changing public perception and providing a sense of belonging. I want to share that still-urgent letter with you all:
AN OPEN LETTER FROM THREE LESBIAN WRITERS ON CENSORSHIP
[Editor's Note: Chrystos, Audre Lorde and Minnie Bruce Pratt were awarded Fellowships in Creative Writing by the National Endowment for the Arts in January 1990.]
Dear Friends:
On July 6 in the Washington Blade, Mr. Josh Dare, speaking for the NEA, was quoted as denying that there was any anti-gay bias in the recent refusal of NEA grants to four performance artists, Holly Hughes, Tim Miller and John Fleck, who are openly gay and lesbian, and feminist Karen Finley, who deals with gay issues in her work. To prove that the NEA action was not homophobic, Mr. Dare cited NEA grants previously given to Frameline: the San Francisco Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and to us, Chrystos, Audre Lorde, and Minnie Bruce Pratt, as three lesbian writers. We are writing to protest the use of our work and our names by the NEA to defend its designation of some artists as "too indecent" to deserve government funding. We protest the NEA's denial of responsibility in its bowing to homophobic and anti-feminist political pressure in its refusal of grants to the four
performance artists. We protest the use of our names and work by the NEA to "prove" its non-homophobia, when the very statement of compliance required as part of our NEA grant award contained homophobic language. We protest also the current right-wing attempts to censor all art that is about sexual issues and has sexual content; in particular we protest the current Congressional ban on the funding of homoerotic art by the NEA, as expressed in the socalled Helms amendment* attached to all NEA grants.
We protest the use by the NEA of our precarious economic position as lesbian artists, and for two of us as women of color a position which led to our agreeing to receive NEA grants to justify discrimination against other lesbian, gay and women artists. We protest the use by the NEA of our work to deny its homophobia when it does not acknowledge that it may yet, because of political pressure, single out and punish us at the end of our award year because of the homoerotic or sexual content of our writing.
We believe that the current heightened censorship of lesbian and gay artists is an opening salvo in an escalating war against the artists, and cultures, of any group that is dedicated to social change, and dedicated to the overturning of hierarchies of power that include heterosexism, racism, anti-Semitism, sexism, ableism, classism, ageism. It is within this context that we protest the censors in Congress, in the NEA, in the country at large, who define lesbian and gay existence, and any art that springs from our experience, as obscene
Because being lesbian/gay is not obscene by definition, we must be able to make art about any part of our lives going out to dinner, back-packing with friends, raising our children, or attending a political demonstration. There is nothing obscene about that art, whether or not it has explicit lesbian/gay content. The art that we create from the substance of our lives is not obscene. It is about different ways of creating loving relationships, families, and communities. To the censors, however, our very presence, our very existence, renders us obscene.
In art, explicit sexual descriptions and depictions of women by men both loving and hateful have long been acceptable. However, lesbian celebration of our own bodies and relationships in art challenges sexist assumptions that women's lives matter only as they are intertwined with men's, that women's
IT’S GIVING QUEER EXCELLENCE
OUT IN THE SILENCE AWARD
Frameline’s annual Out in the Silence Award generously underwritten by Dean Hamer and Joe Wilson honors an outstanding film that highlights brave acts of LGBTQ+ visibility. This year’s recipient is The Secret of Me, directed by Grace Hughes-Hallett
JURY AWARDS
Annually, Frameline juries convene during the festival to select winners in the following categories: Outstanding First Feature Award; Outstanding Documentary Feature; Outstanding Narrative Short; and Outstanding Documentary Short.
bodies exist only for male pleasure and use. Lesbian
art presents the power and beauty of female sexual pleasure, the possibility of sexually autonomous women, the complexity of lives which are not constricted by sexist and heterosexist roles.
Lesbian and gay art, which shows the complexities of same-sex love, challenges societally constructed definitions of sexuality, gender, and nature. It is no accident that the forces of censorship are being led by Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina; Helms has made a political career of passing off as "truth" such social myths as that a person's gender, race, or religion makes her/him superior or inferior to another.
In fact, Senator Helms, and other censors, fear lesbian/gay art precisely because public viewing, reading, and discussion of our work leads to a questioning of so-called "normal" patterns of power and hierarchy in US culture.
The current attempt to censor sexually explicit lesbian and gay art is tied to attempts to control information about sexuality in general, including information about safe sex and AIDS, about contraception and abortion, about lesbian and gay sexuality. This censorship is being imposed not just in the art world but in radio programming, reproductive rights counseling, and classroom teaching. The struggle about censorship of information is happening not just at the level of federal government, but also at the state and local level; not just within government, but also within private corporations and within public schools and universities.
The current struggle about sexual censorship is part of a climate of repression in which many groups are targeted, including African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, Native Americans and all people of color; Arabs and Jews; poor people, women, and the disabled; people with radical politics; the young and the old; lesbian and gay people groups that have been called "special interest groups" but that are, in fact, the majority of "the people" in this country.
We, as writers, are determined to continue with our work as proudly self-affirming lesbians. We will not censor ourselves but will witness to all the complexities of our lives as lesbians, including our lives as sexual beings. Please raise your voice against censorship. Contact the NEA and protest its refusal of awards to the four performance artists. Contact
AUDIENCE AWARDS
Since 1984, our audience has been responsible for selecting the Audience Awards for Narrative Feature and Documentary Feature. After attending a qualifying Frameline49 screening, don’t forget to vote for your favorites!
COLIN HIGGINS YOUTH FILMMAKER GRANT
Remi Gabriel (Barbie Boy) and Carmela Murphy and AJ Dubler (A Bird Hit My Window and Now I’m a Lesbian) are the 2025 recipients of our careerlaunching Colin Higgins Youth Filmmaker grants!
your Congressperson immediately to demand reauthorization of the NEA with no restrictions. Work in whatever capacity you can in your community to ensure we do not lose access to the information that we all need about the realities of the lives of gay and lesbian people.
Chrystos
While our understanding of queerness has expanded considerably since this letter was written, its connection to our current moment is unmistakable. It remains imperative that we build on these lessons and, in the words of these visionaries, "Work in whatever capacity [we] can in [our] community to ensure that we do not lose access to the information we all need about the realities of [our] lives” the lives of gay, lesbian, trans, nonbinary, and all queer people.
Allegra Madsen Executive Director
HOW TO FEST
BOX OFFICE
THE FRAMELINE TEAM
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Allegra Madsen
DIRECTOR OF PARTNERSHIPS & DEVELOPMENT Matthew Ramsey
MEMBERSHIP & DEVELOPMENT MANAGER
Esme Agilar
PUBLICITY & PROJECT MANAGER Kate Bove
PROGRAMMING MANAGER Joe Bowman
SENIOR MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS
MANAGER Court Ross
DISTRIBUTION MANAGER Matthew Wong
THE FRAMELINE49 TEAM
PROGRAMMERS Sam Berliner, Aidan Dick, Kegan Marling, Jorge Molina, Kathleen Mullen, Ariel Ottey, Liz Purchell, Kristal Sotomayor OPERATIONS LogicFlare
PRODUCER, OPERATIONS & EVENTS Kaitlyn Ryan
PRODUCTION MANAGER Angy Fonseca
EXHIBITION MEDIA MANAGER Jesse Dubus
FILMMAKER SERVICES MANAGER Wendy Keeling
EVENTS MANAGER Ris Tena VOLUNTEER MANAGER Cicily Singh
SEAT CAPTAIN Steven Abbott
TECH & MEDIA COORDINATOR Paco Aschwanden
BOX OFFICE MANAGER Alex Murphy
MANAGING DIRECTOR, LOGICFLARE Ryan DelGado
SPONSORSHIP MANAGER Alberto Navar
MARKETING & OUTREACH ASSISTANT Cali Guisto
TRAILER EDITOR Andrew Sheets
MOTION GRAPHICS Simon Bucktrout
FESTIVAL IDENTITY & DESIGN PACT Studio
PROGRAM DESIGN The Grass Agency
CATERING & BEVERAGES
PRE-FESTIVAL
Pick up your member t-shirt, buy tickets, get merch, and ask questions! WELCOME CASTRO 525 Castro Street Wed 5/14 & Thurs 5/15 3-7 pm Fri 5/16 & Sat 5/17 1-7 pm 518 VALENCIA Frameline49 Lounge Mon 6/16 & Tues 6/17 1-7 pm
DURING FESTIVAL Box office locations open one hour prior to the start time of each screening at the film’s venue. Merch is available for purchase at 518 Valencia from 6/19–6/28 during the hours of 10am–6 pm.
NEED SUPPORT? Phone: 415.552.5580 Mon-Fri, 10 am-5 pm PDT For after-hours support email boxoffice@frameline.org
RUSH LINE Be like Troye Sivan and feel the rush! When advance tickets are
FILMS OPENING NIGHT
DREAMS IN
DRIVE BACK
FOUR MOTHERS
SCHEDULE
PLAY ON
San Francisco International
LGBTQ+ Film Festival
June 18–28, 2025