Thirty-five years ago in the early days of New Queer Cinema, THE spot to gather and watch cutting-edge queer shorts was a run-down Mission district bar that hosted .99 Cent Queer Video Fest. Let the original curator (and bartender!) Jeffrey Winter of The Film Collaborative take you back!

Written by and starring The Comeback and Hacks’ Dan Bucatinsky and featuring a rich ensemble cast that includes Richard Ruccolo, Sasha Alexander, Adam Goldberg, Christina Ricci, Andrea Martin, Doris Roberts, and Lisa Kudrow, All Over the Guy is a hilarious rom-com about a mismatched pair of gay men set up on a blind date by their mutual straight friends. Come revisit the Closing Night film of Frameline25 on the big screen again!

Safe sex in the 1970s. A classic from legendary gay experimental filmmaker Michael Brynntrup.

A musical short featuring our very own Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, which originally premiered at the 5th annual Festival in 1981.

Pioneering lesbian filmmaker, former San Franciscan, and Frameline Award winner Barbara Hammer takes center stage in Brydie O’Connor’s Teddy Award-winning film. Bolstered by exquisitely edited archival footage, this doc assembles a lyrical portrait of the ambitious visual poet behind Nitrate Kisses and other groundbreaking experimental queer works, illuminating how Hammer’s legacy continues to inspire artists and preserve our shared histories.

The debut feature by Lilly and Lana Wachowski follows a butch handywoman (Gina Gershon) and femme fatale (Jennifer Tilly) as they plan to build a new life for themselves by stealing from a money-launderer for the mob (Joey Pantoliano). Thirty years on, this remarkable film continues to inspire for its dazzling neo-noir visuals and story, and its burning-hot exploration of lesbian love and sex.

Starring Nigel Terry, Sean Bean, and Tilda Swinton in her feature film debut, Derek Jarman’s fictionalized look at Baroque painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio’s life is visually striking, deliciously queer, and lovingly restored and remastered by the British Film Institute. Using the famed painter’s work as a visual blueprint, this unconventional portrait centers on a bisexual love triangle between Caravaggio and two of his models.

Cybill Shepherd lends her voice as the narrator for this insightful documentary, which tells the story of acclaimed screenwriter and director Colin Higgins — the man behind classics like 9 to 5, Harold and Maude, and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. With wit and warmth, the film’s star-studded cast, including Jane Fonda, Dolly Parton, Lily Tomlin, Gene Wilder, and Goldie Hawn, share their memories of one of Hollywood’s sharpest comedic talents.

Still as provocative and controversial as it was when it hit theatres in 1980, William Friedkin's lurid thriller stars Al Pacino in one of his most iconic roles as a rookie cop who goes undercover in New York City's gay leather scene to hunt a serial killer lurking in the shadows of fetish bars in the Meatpacking District and haunting the public sex hot spots of the city.

An age-gap romance, a road trip that ends in a rain-soaked kiss, and desert vistas scored by Patsy Cline and Ella Fitzgerald hits — Donna Deitch’s landmark 1985 romantic drama has it all. Desert Hearts, a perennial Festival favorite, returns to Frameline in celebration of the film’s recent 40th anniversary. When uptight, soon-to-be-divorced Vivian Bell meets the free-spirited, ever-charming Cay Rivvers, one of cinema’s most iconic romances unfolds in this lesbian classic.

Widely recognized for featuring one of the earliest known onscreen kisses between two Black women, Dreams of Passion is an exploration of desire set in a dance studio that marked a critical moment.

Banned in 22 states and four countries, this landmark work of the American avant-garde by Jack Smith is a hedonistic tableaux of Hollywood iconography, gender subversion and expansion, classic melodrama, and torrid sexuality.

In a “psuedo-instructional” videotape, director Nguyen Tan Hoang embraces the desires of full, unrepentant bottomhood, showing the independence and gratification of being the bottom.

An assortment of classic Frameline trailers and short films from key moments in the Festival’s five-decade history that highlight the evolution of the world’s longest-running LGBTQ+ film exhibition.

A collaborative effort between some of queer cinema’s juggernauts — including future Oscar winner Rob Epstein, Frances Reid, Greta Schiller, Lucy Winer, Jan Oxenberg, and Barbara Hammer — captures the first National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights in 1979.

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.

Cruising the streets of San Francisco in her vintage Buick, a charming Black French lesbian shares her butch Casanova philosophy, "You can never experience too many women."

Pumping high octane fuel into the ride of your life!

Mixing fantasy and reality with enthralling performances from Jack Waters and Sarah Schulman, Jason & Shirley Revisited — now recut and remastered by director Stephen Winter for its 10th anniversary — explores the intersection of art and exploitation, race and privilege, and gender and power by staging a fictitious account of the making of Shirley Clarke’s controversial doc Portrait of Jason at the Chelsea Hotel.

Heavily censored in the Philippines upon its initial release, this scandalous classic returns to the big screen in a brand new 4K restoration. Small town hustler Pol (Allan Paule) moves to big city Manilla to find a new living performing in male strip shows, only to be thrust into the shadowy underworld of sexual exploitation that lies just beneath the glitz and glitter (and soap suds)

Brooklyn Bloomberg and friends do some steamy kibbitzing in this fascinating piece of Yiddish-keit, circa 1923. Matzo Maidels combines rare 16mm archival lesbian porn footage overlaid with an outrageous Jewish porno voiceover — sprinkled with colloquial Yiddishisms.

Curated by Jenni Olson, this block is a wild tangle of hot, hilarious, and seldom-seen rarities from Frameline’s history.

Featuring Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures, Jean Genet’s Un chant d'amour, and a rarely seen classic from recent Frameline guest Todd Haynes, this is a must-see lineup for queer cinephiles.

Before the reading challenge on Drag Race, before Madonna’s “Vogue,” there was ballroom. Paris Is Burning shines a light on the late 80s ballroom culture of New York City, emerging from Black, Latino, and Trans communities. Winner of the Audience Award at Frameline14 and still as vital, entertaining, and moving 35 years later, Jennie Livingston’s essential documentary is a profound record of the experiences, ambitions, and talent of an underrepresented culture.

Restless schoolboys daydream in Super 8 in this homoerotic free-for-all where trans-masculine and gender nonconforming actors dominate.

A delicious spread of decadent delights that will keep you coming back for more.

For even longer than Frameline has been around, queer filmmakers have been depicting Bay Area life on their own terms and telling their own fabulous stories, blissfully far from the mainstream. Join Peabody Award-winning documentary filmmaker and longtime Frameline programmer Peter L. Stein for a unique clip-filled journey through a highly unofficial archive of local queer self-reflection.

Elvira bets her husband Jack that she can bed her new friend Betsy by midnight or else Jack can make it with Betsy's husband Eddie in filmmaker Radley Metzger and screenwriter Jerry Douglas's classic sex comedy that puts the X in bisexual.

This autobiographical short by Bay Area filmmaker Aarin Burch revolves around a young filmmaker’s reflections on race, love, self-representation, and the tension of being seen.

In this early '90s transmasc/butch classic, the one and only Stafford recounts a memorable encounter at a lesbian sex club. Digital restoration by UCLA Film & Television Archive.


This experimental documentary challenges traditional notions of Black masculinity and identity through illuminating conversations with an ensemble of preachers, poets, students, activists, husbands, and fathers. Through overexposed black-and-white imagery, a visceral film grain, and an original trip-hop score personalized to each participant, Still Black gives us all (no matter our background) a chance to learn about the inherent beauty and power of Blackness and transness.

Banned in its native France and heavily censored around the world, the only film directed by novelist Jean Genet is a masterpiece in poetic homoerotic longing. Two prisoners in complete isolation, separated by the thick brick walls, and desperately in need of human contact, devise a most unusual kind of communication.

Long unavailable, this newly restored period drama by writer/director Srđan Karanović — made during the outbreak of the Yugoslavian civil war in June 1991 — depicts the travails of a girl raised as a boy in early 19th-century Serbia.

Venturing forth to explore her BDSM desires, Alixe is torn between her loving relationship with her girlfriend and her ambition to be an edgy artist in this wry, rarely-seen musical-comedy fantasia from Paris Is Burning director Jennie Livingston.

Participants in the very first “Gay Film Festival of Super-8 Films” (what ultimately became Frameline) — including filmmakers Marc Huestis, David Weissman, Dan Nicoletta, and Rob Epstein — share their recollections.