Since San Francisco is the granddaddy of American gay culture, it’s only fitting the city is home to the oldest LGBT film festival in the States. From June 14 through June 24 Frameline 36 will screen hundreds of new gay films, shorts, groundbreaking documentaries and even a retro screening of 1982’s Annie.
Among the more anticipated films is Gayby (trailer above), director Jonathan Lisecki’s quirky comedy about New York thirtysomethings Jenn and Matt (Jenn Harris and Matthew Wilkas) who decide to have a baby together—despite the fact 
that they’re longtime pals and Matt is gay. Based on Lisecki’s short film of the same name, Gayby promises to combine exploration of serious friendship-boundary issues with Bridesmaid-style antics.
On June 20, it’s the Frameline debut of Love or Whatever, from director Rosser Goodman (Holding Trevor). Tyler Poelle (at right in photo) plays a successful gay man whose life turns upside down when his long-term boyfriend unexpectedly dumps him—for a woman. Will a journey of self-discovery lead to new insights—and a new love? The comedy also stars Kate Flannery (The Office), Michael Carbonaro (Another Gay Movie) and Jennifer Elise Cox, best remembered as Jan from the The Brady Bunch Movie.
Passionate Politics: The Life and Work of Charlotte Bunch is a harrowing documentary about lesbian activist and author Bunch, who has been fighting for our rights since the 1960s. Produced and directed by New York’s Hunter College professor Tami Gold, the 58-minute film plays June 15 along with A Force of Nature, Academy Award-winning filmmaker Barbara Kopple’s (Harlan County, USA) documentary short about Ellen Ratner, an out lesbian and head of the Talk Radio News S
ervice in Washington. Passionate Politics co-producer David Pavlosky is expected to attend a post-screening Q&A.
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
FTMs and the folks who love them are spotlighted in documentary Sexing the Transman, showing on June 17. Directed by transmale porn star Buck Angel (right), the film features interviews with both trans and cisgendered folk, including comedians Ian Harvie and Margaret Cho, about female-to-male transition and how it relates to identity and sexuality.
Michael Aker’s Morgan is a rather unique entry. It chronicles the life of gay cyclist Morgan Oliver (Leo Minaya) five month after a devastating bicycle accident leaves him paralyzed from the waist down. Morgan’s life takes a turn for the better after meeting Dean (Jack Kesy), a sensitive and quiet man Morgan begins a relationship with and someone who inspires Morgan to re-enter the same bike race that caused his tragic accident. Morgan will show on June 22.
Also showing are the Latin lesbian drama Mosquita y Mari, the David Lynchian Graupel Poetry, green-card-wedding flick I Do and the Palestinian melodrama The Invisible Man.
For more information and a complete list of all films, visit Frameline 36.
Photos: Rosser Goodman, Buck Angel Entertainment
Kaderade
Hm. Me and my best friend are totally like that. I’ll answer her text on a date haha. So we’re a little codependent even tho we claim to be loners. Which is why i don’t think I like the idea of Gayby. I think I cringed as soon as I realized they were gonna be sexing it up to make the baby. It just seems really wieeeerd. Just not my cup of tea. It sounds like every hag’s dream though so I’m sure they’ll be all over this one.
Bill
Buck Angel does harm to Transmen by making them into a sex object and a novelty fuck for people who have no other interest in Transmen other than fucking them, or in the case of gay men it’s so they can fuck some pussy and claim that they’re somehow having sex with a man and not a woman/female.
David
@Bill: Better to be fetished than ignored
hamoboy
@Bill: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA… Oh My God. Your comment is a textbook example of what makes the LG & B sometimes want to run away from the T. I would gladly fight for transgender rights, just not alongside idiots like you.
David
@hamoboy: I agree Hamoboy
Drew
Welcome to the world of magical thinking when it comes to Transmen and their genitals and gender identity!
I feel bad for Transmen since they don’t have penises and they only have vaginas and no gay man or even straight woman is going to want to have sex-even a booty call or pity fuck, with someone who has a vagina and was once a woman, and let’s not mention relationships since it’s not going to happen or if a relationship does happen it’s not going to last.
Transmen can shout until they’re blue in the labia that they have a “penis” and are “men” but they’re always going to have a vagina, and be female both biologically and genetically.
hamoboy
Everyone needs to chill out and watch this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwalLw_mCn4
Jay
There are some gay identified men who are actually bisexual who are curious about what it’s like to fuck a woman or someone with a vagina so they fuck a Transman as a novelty and get to experience pussy and pretend that they’re still “gay” and having sex with a “man” when they’re actually having sex with someone who is a woman and who despite all of the hormones and cosmetic surgery will always be a woman both physically and biologically.
MikeNYC
I find Buck Angel to be trashy, vulgar, not sexy, and Buck is compensating way too much to be a bisexual Transman and it all just makes Buck look totally fake and full of BS, and anything but male or masculine.
I saw Buck’s “It gets better” video and it was a total joke. Yeah telling LGBT and hetero kids advice from a porn star. SMH *Facepalm*
ErikSF
LGB and T are separated and never have been together even if some urban academics who studied queer theory and gender studies want to claim that they belong together, and that it’s always been this way it has not. Then again these people want to completely revise LGB history and claim that Trans people were at Stonewall and started the riots-which is not true, and also that drag queens are somehow Trans phobic which is BS!
Bipolar Bear
Frameline is a wonderful festival. I’m proud as a filmmaker to have had two of my films screen there in 2009 and 2011. Can’t wait to get back there, it is the best gay fest in the world, I reckon: http://bipolarbear.co.nz/2011/03/02/swimming-in-vodka/
Jabaroo
@Drew: Why do you post that exact comment each time there is an article about trans men? Why do I get the feeling that some of the comments are posted by the same person?
um ya
I’ve never really understood the T in LBGT. I agree that Trans people should be equal and treated with respect, but I don’t understand how gender identity and sexual orientation are related.
I don’t mean that as a flame. I sincerely would like someone to explain it to me.
Simon
So there was this women named Judith Butler who wrote this book in the late 80s called Gender Trouble. It basically proved that Gender is performative. This means:
When we gays act “feminine” we are performing the female gender. When you see a masculine gay emulating a Tom of Finland drawing, he is performing a stereotype of masculinity.
Same goes for women. The word “tomboy” refers to a female who performs the masculine gender. Female-sexed people can perform feminine gender as well.
If we, as humans, perform a gender, it cannot be biological; it cannot be something essential. You might be saying “ok so “Gender” might be a social construction, but “Sex” is real and biological and stable, right?” Well…
The really crazy other thing that Butler did was prove that sex (male or female) is almost as much of a construction as gender. What makes a male? Is it a dick? Is it hormones? Is it chromosomes? Because intersex people sort of make it difficult for that male/female sexual dichotomy to exist.
@Drew Additionally, I’ve seen some transmen who have bigger dicks than some biological dicks (because when you take testosterone as a transman, your clit often enlarges to the size of a small dick that gets erect). Are those XY men with micropenis or smaller penises not men?
@um ya All of this “gender business” is pretty important because LGB AND T people are all discriminated against based on the fact that they are sexually different than the mainstream. We’ve often been grouped together because we’ve all been viewed as sexual/mental diseases/social ills. Like a big queer oppressed family.
@ErickSF Trans people were at Stonewall. You can read it in almost any account of the riots (Duberman’s Stonewall, Faderman’s Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers, and even the Wikipedia page for the Stonewall Riots). Sylvia Rivera and Bebe Scarpi, both transwomen, were there.
And finally, @Bill Buck Angel gets to do whatever he wants. It’s pretty conservative rhetoric to take the exception as the rule. Angel is just the first in a niche that is sure to flourish in the next 50 years. And “Tranny porn” has been a thing for ever; he’s just been the best at marketing himself. Remember when he was on Tyra?
Pluralism is so the new assimilation.