Frameline 31.

The San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival, opening tomorrow and running through June 24, often goes by two names - that full-blown mouthful or, more simply, Frameline plus the number of the edition, in this year's case, 31.

Johnny Ray Huston opens the San Francisco Bay Guardian's cover package with a brief take on The Witnesses (Les Témoins): "Choosing [André] Téchiné's intimate Paris-set look at love under siege at the beginning of the AIDS crisis as its opening-night film, the Frameline fest... acknowledges its maturity. While LGBT identity might be thriving in the marketplace, The Witnesses does the hard work of looking back. Did gay culture almost die in the 80s?"

Updated through 6/18.

Also: "Glue is that rare kind of filmmaking so attuned to pleasure and spontaneity that it tickles your palate, opening up new possibilities about how to live. The film's chief subject matter - bisexuality that takes exhilarating form before the constraints of adulthood can arrive - is ideally realized through [Alexis] Dos Santos's sensual and whim-driven approach."

"Sexually repressed nuns, naughty prisoners, lustful wardens, and love-thirsty vampires are the celebrated heroines of Triple X Selects: The Best of Lezsploitation, Michelle Johnson's effort to reappropriate 1960s and 1970s sexploitation flicks. Intrigued by these films' soundtracks, the Los Angeles DJ, musician, and cult-film enthusiast hunted for the genre's most precious gems and compiled them into a 47-minute metafilm." Maria Komodore exchanges email with Johnson, who'll be present at the screening on Saturday.

Lynn Rapoport on 1983's Born in Flames: "In the thin line of plot running patchily through [Lizzie] Borden's vérité-style feature, surfacing at the Roxie Film Center on June 22, the War of Liberation has brought about a single-party system run by Socialist Democrats, the postrevolution economy is in the toilet, and working women are bearing the brunt of the mass layoffs that have ensued.... Borden's aim, perhaps unrealistic and perhaps naive, is to present an expanding patchwork of radicalized women unified across lines of class and race in the face of overarching sexism."

"The cultural divide between a supposed gay agenda and faith-based biases is well represented in several features within Frameline's expansive 2007 program," writes Dennis Harvey. "Its representations run a wide gamut - just as the terms gay and Christian have come to encompass wildly disparate US communities."

Marke B previews four docs on "legendary nightlife personalities. Call it the Party Monster effect. Following the release of two films about the tragedy of Michael Alig's breakneck rise and murderous fall, filmmakers have become more attuned to the significance of clubs in gay life - or else they've realized that featuring outrageous club kids in their movies is a shortcut to notoriety."

"Short takes" on 10 entries.

Meanwhile, at the Evening Class, Michael Hawley offers a lively preview of the festival, too.

Update, 6/14: "What can be said about Frameline31, beyond genuflecting to its extreme range of themes, styles and audiences? Nuthin'. But here goes." So begins Dennis Harvey's too modest preview for SF360.

Update, 6/18: Last month, Matthew S Bajko filed a story for the Bay Area Reporter on Frameline's decision to cancel a screening of Catherine Crouch's 15-minute short, The Gendercator, after it'd already been lined up for this year's LGBT film festival in San Francisco. Now Moira Sullivan reports on the scene outside the Roxie on Friday, when the film would have been screened.

Posted by dwhudson at June 13, 2007 8:28 AM