Frameline is thrilled to partner with guest bloggers from the University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire during this year's festival! We've invited students from the LGBTQA Studies: San Francisco Travel Seminar at UWEC to share their experiences of Frameline and their thoughts on San Francisco's queer community. As they attend Frameline and experience San Francisco, they will be creating LGBTQ-themed documentaries, as well as vetting films for their second Eau Queer Film Festival in the fall. For more information about the contributors to this blog, click here: http://blog.frameline.org/2011/06/biography
"The series of shorts was captivating and although it did not seem like there was an instant theme, I had to look at three films that portrayed those films the most. The films I want to mainly focus on are: Skallamann, Revolution, and Cold Star. Each of these films seemed to have a strong catalyst in them, or someone who sensed a change.
Skallamann was a Norwegian musical that incorporated basic shots of the city with powerful shots of the countryside while a young man sang his heart out about kissing a tall and handsome bald guy. The music was powerful because it was a quieter film where you could hear the clock ticking that transformed into an amazing crowd-clapping musical. The culmination of the short was when we see the parents, who originally rejected their son’s choice, start talking about each other being their “bald guy” and their own parents’ rejection.
Revolution showed me the quieter side of US/foreign films. Even though there was a quiet side to the film, the message was powerful and to the point. Although this film was shot in the United States, it incorporated Iranian and Filipino language and that fluidity made it more interesting. The son of the film was always trying to “work within the system to make incremental changes” as his father put it, in order to have a better life and live the way he wanted to. Shot in a spectacular view of colors with natural light, it made the film easy to enjoy and hard to turn away from. There was the general cliché of two boys lying next to each other, staring, until the kiss, but the catalyst took the story again in this short.
Finally, the short Cold Star had the largest catalyst impact. There was not a word uttered throughout the short (I do not count squeals of laughter), and that particular aspect is what made it the best short of the day. This German short relied on music to tell the story; starting off slow and drawn-out then breaking into upbeat music that moved the story along. A drag queen plunged into a pool with a boy, and then after they kissed, the rest of the surrounding people started to dive in and make out with each other in a non-scandalous “orgy”. The refection of light from the pool water onto the walls is the final aspect that made this short absolutely brilliant.
Readers should know that these films would make you think outside of the box and make you look to sound for base and context of the film. The shorts are magnificent together, yet diverse in their own way. It seemed that they were crowd-favorites for both their entertainment value and emotional connectedness." - Bryton Fredrick