Frameline50: Doc Shorts

Explore queer stories from around the globe in this gripping documentary shorts block.

Short films showing in this program:

Communion (Petala Lopes, 24 mins)

Lesbian friends over 50 travel together and, away from the world’s gaze, celebrate their friendship, their desire, and their freedom. Over the weekend, they fully experience the richness of a reality they already carry within themselves, strengthening the bonds that unite them.

Cruising Lesbiana (Joyce Victoria Newrzella, 18 mins)

elect characters from Barcelona’s flinta community sit in a driving car and and talk about cruising, desire and different forms of spaces. Rough HDV material and selected images draw on the city of Barcelona and a fictional narrative of a cab driver who explores various forms of cruising areas, creating an experimental docu-fiction narrative.

Here, Queer, and On TV (Cassandra Herrman & Kelly Whalen, 16 mins)

Before YouTube, Lavender Lounge lit up public access TV with a ’90s queer and trans dance party and groundbreaking show, capturing San Francisco’s first Dyke March and the first official Pride video. Thirty years later, creator Mark Kliem brings rare footage to light, reuniting the original crew with younger generations when queer history is again under attack.

Making It Fit (Mariana Leal, 5 mins)

Making It Fit is a short animated documentary reflecting on the experience of death and mourning in the LGBTQ+ community, and the ways that navigating tradition, grief, and family often necessitates reinvention of funerary and remembrance rituals. Looking at some of the issues the current prevalent practices in Euro-American countries raise when it comes to mourning, this film will share some of the ways in which the members of the Queer community have been instinctively reinventing their grieving and celebration ceremonies for their late loved ones.

Oh Paulo (Cam Archer, 17 mins)

After failing to capture a boy named Paulo with his camera, filmmaker Cam Archer (Wild Tigers I Have Known, Frameline30) reflects on recent shoots, what’s missing, and what he can’t seem to stop photographing. Driven by Archer’s casual, confessional narration, Oh Paulo is an unflinching portrait of a middle-aged artist — haunted, yet still looking for more.

So Be It (Matthew Sorgie, 8 mins)

Thus animated documentary offers a rare and tender portrait of lifelong queer love by sharing the candid, heartfelt stories of five LGBTQIA+ couples.

Too Disgusting to Be Confused (Maya Avidov, 13 mins)

Founded in 1972 by sculptor Andrew Logan, The Alternative Miss World is a celebration of transformation and unorthodox beauty. Starting as makeshift private parties held in his artist studio in an old jigsaw factory, the event married the Miss World competition with Crufts dog show, all with a sense of joy and humour. An instant smash hit, early judges and competitors included cultural legends like David Hockney, Derek Jarman, Zandra Rhodes, and Leigh Bowery. 1978 saw them take the party public, hiring a big-top tent on Clapham Common for a circus themed extravaganza, hosted by drag icon Divine. A film about the night premiered at Cannes in 1980, and was meant to make its London debut on the same evening as the Miss World event. However there was an attempt to scupper this homecoming when later that year they found themselves in The Royal Court of Justice, being sued by Miss World and represented by a trainee barrister by the name of Tony Blair…