Saturday, June 20, 2009

Coming to you from sunny, windy, foggy, hot and cold San Francisco

Here now - reporting from Frameline Film Festival, the oldest and largest LGBT film festival in the world.
While TIGLFF is 20 and Reel Affirmations 19, Frameline is the grand sequoia of us all - a whopping 33 years old and still one of the most cutting edge and progressive festivals out there.

Every day, I'll post snippets of news from the festival, as well as a brief tour diary of the parties, haunts and non-festival items of interest.

Here's a brief roundup of our last 72 (or possibly 96 hours) in San Francisco.
Joining me on this trip is Leesil Ainslie, the lovable grounding force in my life, who came along to make sure that I didn't defect to Petaluma to become an organic chicken farmer. 

The plane ride over was primarily a 7 hour exercise in cataloging everything we forgot:

1. Chargers for both the Blackberry AND the iphone
2. Hairbrush
3. Comfortable shoes (for me). I have in my possession two pair of flimsy sandals, my brand-new running shoes (which will probably never leave my bag), and my first purchase in SF - a pair of black leather Diane von Furstenberg mules with 3 inch wedges. Needless to say, these, despite their bargain price of $17 at Buffalo Exchange, will NOT suffice for day to day travel.
4. Hair product
5. Long sleeve shirts
6. Avant Garde San Francisco guidebook

Between last-minute dog sitting instructions, turning in a grant to DCCAH, emergency room visits for Leesil's clients, and the general mayhem that is our life in DC, we barely made our flight.
But, hey.. here we are! 11 pm and ready for bed. 

First day:
Wake up early for an already scheduled conference call, which is now at 6 am SF time. 
Out the door and hey.. there's a coffee shop that one of the Jezzies recommended.
Fuel up and spend the day speculating on which tattoos we'd get if we moved here.
Dinner and a downtown Oakland festival with Tampa peeps Jessica and Andrew - endless sake and great conversation with old friends. 

Friday:
Tacos and murals in the Mission,  then we head over to the Castro to pick up our passes and tickets for the evening.
The plan is to watch "And Then Came Lola" and Clapham Junction.
Lola's sold out, so we take our consolation prize (free drink tickets) to Qbar across the street, where luck would have it, we meet Jennifer Derbin, the DP of Lola. By now, we're on our way to the Curve women's party, and are slowly losing our resolve to travel across town to see a documentary about the making of The Boys in the Band. 
Fate steps in and we meet someone with two extra tickets to Lola. $20 later, we're in!

There's something about SF dykes and their support of the community that brings me to my knees. And Lola, a film shot in San Francisco by women from the area, brings it all to the front in a cheering, whistling, stomping crescendo! Leesil and I exchange glances and begin to plot our move to the West Coast. 
Which screeches to a halt two hours later when we are greeted by 50 degree weather and whistling winds. We both grew up in Florida, and the thought of sunshine and cold weather all at once could easily make our brains implode.

Saturday morning:
Off to see docs about homosexuality and religions, a doc about Joe D'allasandro and some more that I can't remember at the moment. Tune in tomorrow for an update - we're headed out the door to spend the next 12 hours watching films.


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