FRAMELINE36: REVEALING MR. MAUGHAM (2012)—The Evening Class Interview With Michael House

Michael House and I last conversed when his documentary The Magnificent Tati (2009) premiered at San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Part of that conversation went up on SF360 with the balance appearing on The Evening Class. House has followed up his portrait of Jacques Tati with the equally informative Revealing Mr. Maugham (2012), premiering in the Bay Area as part of the 36th edition of the Frameline Film Festival.With earnest thoroughness, House recounts W. Somerset Maugham's fascinating literary career and reveals intriguing elements of his personal life that enrichen an

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Alan Furst, Alexander McCall Smith, Armistead Maupin, David Bellos, Documentary, Frameline36, Gerald Haxton, LGBT Cinema, Michael House, Pico Iyer, Selina Hastings, W. Somerset Maugham,

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THE INVISIBLE WAR (2012)—By Frako Loden

The Invisible War (USA: Kirby Dick, 2012) (In theatres June 22)—The statistics that bolster the shocking subject matter of this documentary—an epidemic of sexual assault in the US military—threaten to overwhelm any criticism of its presentation. The numbers are simply astonishing. For example, 15 percent of all military recruits have raped someone in the past. Since sexual assault is a crime of repetition and obsession and not taken seriously by higher-ups, the military is a "target-rich environment" for repeat offenders. Over 30 percent of all female veterans are raped, but 80 percent of

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Documentary, Frako Loden, Kirby Dick,

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FRAMELINE36—FOUR (2012)

It seems anymore that an American independent doesn't have sufficient credibility unless it's mounted one or two successful crowd sourcing campaigns. Joshua Sanchez's performance-driven feature debut Four (2012) [Official site / Facebook] has managed to achieve just that, securing its requisite $5,000 in Kickstarter funds for the film to traffic to its world premiere at the recent Los Angeles Film Festival. I usually suffer from compassion fatigue when it comes to Kickstarter campaigns—as a film writer I'm hit up by every project imaginable—but, supporting Four was a no-brainer. This film—

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Aja Naomi King, Christopher Shinn, E.J. Bonilla, Emory Cohen, Frameline36, GLBT Cinema, Joshua Sanchez, Michael McMenomy, Wendell Pierce,

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FRAMELINE36—JOBRIATH A.D. (2011)

It's difficult for a young person in their teens or early 20s to have a conscious sense of how they are an active part of cultural history; its living embodiment, in fact. More often than not this is an insight privileged from the vantage of distance, decades later, when one looks back nostalgically from the reflective comfort of the armchair. This week I've had two flights back to the late '60-early '70s. First, Sheila Weller's welcome reassessment of 1967's Summer of Love ("Suddenly That Summer") published in the July 2012 issue of Vanity Fair, and secondly Kieran Turner's Jobriath A.D.

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Cole Berlin, Frameline36, GLBT Cinema, Jerry Brandt, Jobriath, Kieran Turner, Sheila Weller,

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FRAMELINE36—JOSHUA TREE, 1951: A PORTRAIT OF JAMES DEAN (2012)

Arthur Rimbaud and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry are the twin literary spirits guiding Matthew Mishory's debut feature Joshua Tree, 1951: A Portrait of James Dean (2012) [official site / Facebook]—Rimbaud as an introduction to fire, and Saint-Exupéry as the patron saint of puers. Like Saint-Exupéry's Little Prince appearing and disappearing in the desert, Mishory's homostylized take on Hollywood icon James Dean queers the archetype of Dean's eternal youth, as imagined through his formative years at UCLA.With much style and adequate substance, Joshua Tree, 1951: A Portrait of James Dean is more bi

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Dan Glenn, Frameline36, GLBT Cinema, James Dean, James Preston, Jeff Harnar, Matthew Mishory, Michael Marius Pessah,

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FRAMELINE36: FESTIVAL REPORT—By Michael Hawley

June means pretty much one thing to Bay Area cinephiles and that's the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival—better known around these parts as Frameline. This is the organization's 36th year as the "world's largest LGBT media arts non-profit" and their festival line-up boasts 217 films (89 of them features) from 30 countries spread across 104 programs. I've previewed 18 selections on DVD screener and my choices necessarily reflect a predilection for documentaries and international narrative features.French ConnectionsDirector André Téchiné's The Witnesses was Frameline's opening n

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SFIFF 2012: FESTIVAL REPORT (PART TWO)—By Frako Loden

Recapping her experience of the 55th San Francisco International Film Festival (4/19–5/3/12), Frako Loden continues her assembled list of short reviews, from least favorable to most. Part One can be found here.Land of Oblivion (France: Michale Boganim, 2011)—By the time a friend told me he was devastated by this film, my only chance to see it was on DVD. But seeing it on a small screen was powerful enough. The first half is full of social movement as people gather for a Ukrainian country wedding, which is then ruined by rain and the sudden departure of the firefighter groom. (Someone actu

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Frako Loden, SFIFF55,

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