The Frameline Film Festival (also known as San Francisco International LGBTQ+ Film Festival) is an annual event that screens and celebrates films by and about LGBTQ people, established in 1976. The festival is organized by Frameline, a nonprofit media arts organization whose mission statement is "to change the world through the power of queer cinema". Since 2024 the executive director of Frameline has been Allegra Madsen, formerly director of programming.
It is the oldest LGBTQ+ film festival in the world, and with annual attendance ranging from 60,000 to 80,000, the largest LGBTQ+ film exhibition event. It is also the most well-attended LGBTQ+ arts event in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The festival is held over eleven days in late June (reduced in 2004 from eighteen), with the closing night coinciding with San Francisco's annual Gay Pride Day, which takes place on the last Sunday of the month. The Castro Theatre has traditionally been the main venue.
The first festival was organized in 1976 and took place in 1977 at the Gay Community Center at 32 Page Street in San Francisco, under the names Persistence of Vision and the Gay Film Festival of Super-8 Films. It comprised experimental films, screened using a rented projector on a bedsheet pinned to a board. In 1982, the organizers incorporated under the name Frameline, and the festival became Frameline: San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. Michael Lumpkin joined the organization at that time; he became a full-time employee in 1986, molded it into a professional film festival, and retired in 2008 after many years as director. A film distribution arm was founded in 1982. In 1988, the festival received its first grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, but this funding was withdrawn in the 1990s under pressure from Republicans in Congress.
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, a small virtual event was held in June and the 2020 Frameline was delayed to September and was online except for a drive-in screening. Frameline 45, in 2021, was a hybrid online and in-person event. In 2022, Frameline returned to in-person screenings but offered a home streaming option.
Frameline initially grew out of the gay liberation movement and was focused on gay men. "Lesbian" was added to the festival's name in 1982, but a riot led by lesbians at a screening of Midi Onodera's Ten Cents a Dance: Parallax at the Roxie Theater during the 1986 festival led the organization to work toward greater diversity in programming and create a fund to assist women and people of color in completing film projects. The festival was widely referred to as the San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival until 2005, when it adopted the name San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival; it added a Q in 2015, but since 2004 the organization has referred to individual festivals simply as "Frameline" with an appended number. Objections by the transgender community led Frameline to pull Catherine Crouch's The Gendercator from the 2007 festival, leading to accusations of censorship from lesbians.
In 2020 Frameline was a partner, alongside Outfest Los Angeles, the New York Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, & Transgender Film Festival and the Inside Out Film and Video Festival, in launching the North American Queer Festival Alliance, an initiative to further publicize and promote LGBT film. Films screened at the Frameline Film Festival have been donated to the Hormel Center at the San Francisco Public Library. An initial donation was made in 2005, and the library partnered with the Bay Area Video Coalition for conservation of video recordings.
The festival's annual awards include the Frameline Award given to an individual who has played a key role in the history of LGBTQ+ cinema, the Out in the Silence Award for "an outstanding film project that highlights brave acts of visibility", audience awards for Best Feature, Best Documentary, Best Episodic, and Best Short, and juried awards for First Feature and Outstanding Documentary.
1986 Vito Russo <br> 1987 Alexandra von Grote <br> 1988 Divine <br> 1989 Cinevista / Promovision <br> 1990 Robert Epstein <br> 1991 Elfi Mikesch <br> 1992 Marlon Riggs <br> 1993 Pratibha Parmar <br> 1994 Christine Vachon <br> 1995 Marcus Hu <br> 1996 Peter Adair <br> 1997 Channel Four Television <br> 1998 Dolly Hall <br> 1999 Stanley Kwan <br> 2000 Barbara Hammer <br> 2001 The FestivalâÂÂs Founders <br> 2002 Isaac Julien <br> 2003 Fenton Bailey & Randy Barbato <br> 2004 Rose Troche <br> 2005 Gregg Araki <br> 2006 François Ozon <br> 2007 Andrea Sperling <br> 2008 Michael Lumpkin <br> 2009 George Kuchar & Mike Kuchar <br> 2010 Wolfe Video <br> 2011 Margaret Cho <br> 2012 B. Ruby Rich <br> 2013 Jamie Babbit <br> 2014 George Takei <br> 2015 Jeffrey Schwarz <br> 2016 Bob Hawk <br> 2017 Alan Cumming <br> 2018 Debra Chasnoff <br> 2019 Rodney Evans