Frameline 29 runs June 16-26 at the Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, SF; Roxie Cinema, 3117 16th St., SF; Victoria Theatre, 2961 16th St., SF; and Parkway Theater, 1834 Park, Oakl. For tickets (most shows $6-$9), go to Super Satellite, 474 Castro, SF; call (925) 866-9559, or visit www.frameline.org.

Subculture clash
The Frameline fest's 29th incarnation gets tribal.

By Dennis Harvey

BEFORE NEW TRIBALISM , there was the old tribalism of just naturally hanging close to people like you, for purposes of survival and custom and safety in numbers. Yes, distinctions between the two do blur, beyond the element of choice separating "Grob make fire so tribe live" from "Seraphtica juggles torches to Dead Can Dance at a pre-playa fundraiser, this Saturday only."

The history of homohood is primarily subterranean and tribal by nature (no, not nurture), especially the further back you go. Subterranean because so few societies permitted open coloring outside the established gender-role lines, necessitating secrecy. Tribal because, let's face it, humans – not that I'm dissing those freaks of the celibacy-enthusiast persuasion – are social animals that crave companionship. Without which, it becomes that experience umpteen stranded would-be tribalists have suffered, and which one literary lesbian once aptly labeled as the well of loneliness.

Admittedly, it's no fun going from being considered the vanguard of progressive social evolution to being popularly indicted (even by Will and Grace-acclimated, national mainstream media) as a last freak haven for political sentiments "out of touch" with the rest of America. But SF and the greater Bay Area knows this is a crazy phase that, God willing, will pass. Unless the White House's particular God and its angry acolytes drive us yea farther into a reactionary fundamentalism worse than the one we're so worried about in Islam, and which conservative US ideologues did so much to ferment. To paraphrase Aretha, who's terrorizin' who?

Frameline 29 arises like Godzilla from the sea June 16 to once again warmly bathe the city in 11 days of cinematic fire, camp, activism, eros, monster glamour, and individual stories of people discovering themselves by running screaming from something bad. (That something most often being parental or religious.) Nothing provokes spectator bonding like an emergency – or a party. Some of the festival's best, if least-heralded, programs celebrate those tribes within our tribe that laid groundbreaking pipe (ahem) for real freedom of identity, that bucked stereotypes, that continue to define diversity as deeper and more humanly relevant than race, gender, creed, costume, and even political affiliation.

Several are archaeological digs into hitherto undiscovered (or at least undersung) pioneer days, which, contrary to popular belief, haven't been fully logged as yet. A few titles do tell familiar tales, such as the one that – in an outstanding example of "Well, aren't we the center of the universe?" chauvinism – is called not Mostly White Gay Male Sex in Manhattan and on Fire Island in the '70s but simply Gay Sex in the '70s. While those old porn and party clips are always welcome, the world may have reached its quota of documentaries defining gay lib as a sandy square bounded by the velvet ropes of (a) Stonewall, (b) Studio 54, (c) Saint Mark's Baths, and (d) Larry Kramer talking. Sure, you had to be there – but I've seen this story so many times that now I'm beginning to think I was.

A story you definitely haven't heard before is Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton's Cafeteria. Dr. Susan Stryker and Victor Silverman excavated an incident that was no less than "the transgender community's debut on the stage of American political history" – one that occurred, to considerably less lasting fanfare, three years before a similar melee at Stonewall Inn. As old mondo-style exploitation footage limns the 1966 Tenderloin as a landscape of "vice and human misery," former "gutter girls" like Felicia Elizondo and Tamara Ching recall it as the one area where transgender folk were allowed to exist. Not without police kickbacks, harassment, and arrest (for such offenses as "obstructing the sidewalk" and the very loosely defined "female impersonation").

These feathered types flocked together at the nexus of Turk and Taylor Streets, which offered the flophouse El Rosa Hotel (one former resident calls it "a home for wayward girls"), bars, a bathhouse, and not-so-fine dining within high-heeled walking distance. All-night chain diner Compton's, in fact, was the place to see, be seen, and maybe get picked up (by cops or clients). But heightened police hassling one night prompted patrons to fight back – legend has it one threw her coffee in a pushy officer's face, commencing a free-for-all that spilled onto the street and saw many a heavy handbag bitch-slap SF's finest. This forgotten moment's triumph was "the first known instance of collective militant queer resistance to police harassment" in our fair nation, as Stryker puts it.

Another eye-opening flashback to subcultural chutzpah is Scott Bloom's Original Pride. This delightful hour pays tribute to the Satyrs Motorcycle Club, which celebrated its 50th anniversary last year, making it perhaps the nation's oldest continuously operating gay organization. Inspired by the same delinquent Brando Wild One image that drew constant LAPD persecution, these Harley-riding bad boys regularly went on runs to wilderness spots where no one could interrupt their epic boozing, trick riding contests, al fresco sex and Kate Smith lip-synching.

As one latter-day fan puts it, "A buncha big burly biker pigs – what could be bad about that?" It should be noted that both this movie and Screaming Queens contain anecdotes suggesting the Hell's Angels were much more open-minded about their party buddies than you might expect. Another club you might be happy to join – or at least applaud from the sidelines – is the Aggressives, whose ultrabutch NYC lesbians of color insist on defining gender however it suits them in Daniel Peddle's documentary of the same name. And that suits some other people too, as demonstrated when one principal gleefully appears on a Ricki Lake Show episode titled "Straight Women Who Can't Resist Lesbian Studs!"

That same designation is a matter of some suspense in Sasha Aicken's Blood, Sweat and Glitter, about competition for the Miss Trannyshack title. That Tuesday-night institution's decadelong stand at the forefront of alterna-drag extremity is given a more general shakeout in Sean Mullens's Trannyshack, which from its first performance moment (when Old Glory emerges from a place very like that where our president has shoved it) mercifully demonstrates that we're not all in Oz anymore. Surrender, old-school Dorothys: These children are the future, and the stuff they're strutting looks a whole lot more like a GWAR concert than Judy at Carnegie Hall.

Something closer to everyday life – albeit strictly by local standards – is offered by Karen Everett's Women in Love, an engaging personal dive into the "lesbian wonderland" that was SF in the 1990s. And maybe still is, though by journey's end Everett seems to have evolved beyond "living out a fantasy of what gay men got to do in the '70s."

These being women, of course, their equivalent is not quite so druggy or what's-your-name-again? as Gay Sex in the '70s' recalled fuckathon. Instead, it involves private sex parties, workshops in ethical sluthood, primary-partner commitments, concepts like "polyamory," and lots of talking about feelings. (Note to Buddha: Next time, please make me a San Francisco lesbian.) Everett may be obsessive enough to film her love life at length, but she's also filmmaker enough to include scenes where her lovers tell her this filming-every-private-moment thing is just nuts. She knows her scene is cool and does it affectionate justice.

Last and definitely least, we must acknowledge one mo' tribe – "It's more like a fraternity," one member says, and he is oh so right – whose testament to the community's near-infinite diversity is Muzak to our ears. Aptly presented by those cheeky ambulance chasers World of Wonder Productions (of Anna Nicole Uncensored and 101 Rent Boys fame), Wash Westmoreland's Gay Republicans checks in at the Log Cabin club and finds party founder Abraham Lincoln spinning in his grave.

You'll thrill to former Best Hair Colorist in America and Palm Beach-based Maurice Bonamigo opining, "Without sounding snobby, we just think it [a pride celebration] is beneath us." You will be a danger to the theater upholstery as unique LA personality Mark Harris – let's just say gasoline thrown at the seat of his pants would prove fatal – defends Reagan's AIDS nonpolicies. One of the few sane minds (and women, period) here, deciding enough is enough after Shrub's proposed constitutional "Defense of Marriage" amendment, explains, "I can't do any more self-hatred." Now that's a value worth ratifying.