Frameline Festival themes include LGBT elder and transgender topics

June 5, 11:29 AMSF Showbiz ExaminerRobert Sokol

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John Hurt revisits the indomitable Quentin Crisp in An Englishman In New York.

Standing at a podium in front of the mighty Wurlitzer at the landmark Castro Theatre, K.C. Price, Frameline’s new Executive Director, and Festival Director Jennifer Morris announced the schedule for this month's 33rd annual international LGBT film festival. Over 200 features and shorts are on the docket, sourcing from 32 countries, five continents and our own Bay Area backyard.

Queer cultural questions are featured groupings of Asian, Black/African and Latino programming; transgender topics arise in 37 titles; and music will move you in 18 “films that rock.”

Documentaries are a festival staple and this year over two dozen non-fiction entries explore topics ranging from homophobia in women’s sports (Training Rules), Warhol icon Joe Dallesandro (Little Joe), behind the scenes at the making of 1970’s ground-breaking The Boys In The Band (Making The Boys), and still-strutting septuagenarian drag artist Vicki Marlene (Forever’s Gonna Start Tonight).

As usual, galas bookend the festival proper. Opening night screens An Englishman In New York, with John Hurt returning to the role of Quentin Crisp, the outspoken, lipsticked British performer and social commentator, almost 35 years after Hurt’s award-winning performance in The Naked Civil Servant. The film picks up Crisp’s life after he emigrates from London and takes us through his latter decades of success and challenges in the early years of the AIDS pandemic. Swoosie Kurtz and Cynthia Nixon co-star.

Closing night brings Hannah Free, a poignant tale of a longtime lesbian couple living in a nursing home and unable to see each other because one woman has fallen into a coma and her family has forbidden the facility to allow “that woman” to visit. Long-time lesbian icon Sharon Gless (Cagney & Lacey, Queer As Folk) finally plays an out dyke as Hannah, the feisty butch trying to connect with her ailing lover. Gless will attend Frameline’s closing night festivities.

Visit www.frameline.org for tickets (including special Castro Passes) and a full schedule.