Frameline48: Queer Places, Spaces, & Shorts

Our queerness demands to be seen, heard, and appreciated. This program presents the spaces that make us who we are — past, present, and future — that unleash us and unify our community. Co-presented with Drunken Film Festival.

Short films showing in this program:

Mother

Directed by Meg Shutzer & Brandon Yadegari Moreno

In San Francisco, a city known for its queer community and bustling gay nightlife, there hasn’t been a lesbian bar for almost a decade. Driven by nostalgia for a time when queer women had spaces, self-identified dyke Malia Spanyol sets out to build one for the next generation of women and femmes. (23 mins)

One Night at Babes

Directed by Angelo Madsen Minax

At a rural Vermont dive bar called BABES, Cribbage tournaments overlap afternoons of karaoke and nights of raucous queer dance parties. When the aging conservative townsfolk and the younger queer leftists begin sharing the same watering hole, a delicate allegiance flourishes. From the director of North by Current (Frameline45). (29 mins)

Stud Country

Directed by Lina Abascal & Alexandra Kern

Stud Country, the largest queer country western line dancing event in America, was created to preserve Los Angeles’ little known 50+ year queer line dancing tradition. Despite its success and fiercely committed community, the event is set to lose its venue due to gentrification. (11 mins)

Trans Heaven, Pennsylvania

Directed by Hansen Bursic

In the 1970s and 1980s, the small Pennsylvania town of New Hope was among a few safe havens outside of major cities for gay men to find community. Over 30 years later, the town’s legacy remained, but now for a different community: transgender women.

Trans Heaven, Pennsylvania explores the untold story of legendary, weekend-long parties that saw hundreds of transgender women and self-identified crossdressers take over the town, traveling from all over the country to meet other people like them. Through both interviews and stunning animation sequences that utilize never-before-seen archival photography, audiences not only get a glimpse into the heyday of these events in the early 2010s but also the iconic gay bar The Raven which became the unlikely cornerstone of these weekends. (12 mins)

Vollúpya

Directed by Éri Sarmet & Jocimar Dias Jr.

In a post-apocalyptic future, an intergalactic explorer lands at an abandoned museum on a quest to find traces of his long-lost ancestors, and ends up being teleported to the dance floor of a Brazilian queer nightclub in the 1990s. (21 mins)

Expected Guests:

Meg Shutzer, Director (Mother)

Angelo Madsen Minax, Director (One Night at Babes)

Lina Abascal, Director (Stud Country)

Alexandra Kern, Director (Stud Country)

Hansen Bursic, Director (Trans Heaven, Pennsylvania)

Samantha K. Tan, Producer (Trans Heaven, Pennsylvania)

Lynny Van Trieste, Associate Producer (Trans Heaven, Pennsylvania)

Éri Sarmet, Director (Vollúpya)

Jocular Dias Jr., Director (Vollúpya)

Runtime
1h 36m
Director
Various
Format
DCP
First Showing
June 26, 2024