Our Volunteer of the Year Penni Kimmel offered up these thoughts on volunteering with Frameline over the past three decades. Be sure to also check out Penni's review of The Real Anne Lister.
Volunteering creeps up on you. Thirty-one years ago you come to the theater with a friend and you buy tickets and watch a Frameline Film Festival movie the likes of which you've never seen before ... because it's about you. And people you know. Or want to.
Then you get a job as a film reviewer and you get to see lots and lots of films and plan to make it a career. Being a part of Frameline encompasses more than the movies; it's now a way of learning more about filmmaking, distribution, audience response, theater operations, the secrets of popcorn popping, and other valuable life lessons.
Then this disease comes along and starts killing everyone you cared about -- the ones who came to the Frameline films with you -- so you drop the job and go to nursing school. Now you're back to buying tickets. So you start working at the hospital so you can afford a Castro Pass.
The Turning Point. This is where the trap is sprung. You discover that if you volunteer to work at Frameline, you can actually earn vouchers. AND watch movies. AND get a special t-shirt in a vibrant color to wear during your volunteer shifts. Frameline grows larger: the bait gets yummier. Hooked is what you are. You stop work or school or postpone the wedding or the surgery, or whatever you had planned for the month. You've signed your life away on Shiftboard. After all, there's tons of "pre" stuff to do at the Box Office or rolling, stuffing, sorting, stamping (going postal has never been so much fun).
And pretty soon there's the whole of June gone. You are blinking in the daylight as the fog burns off, wearing a worn-out t-shirt, wondering where the hell you've been, what you've been doing, and what that flickering is behind your eyeballs that seems to be connected with the satisfied grin on your face. And knowing that you wouldn't want it any other way.
Where else but at Frameline, I ask you, can you get a whole year's worth of award for a measly little month?