The full Frameline festival is still postponed til fall, but they’re filling your late June with an online mini-Frameline called “Frameline44 Pride Showcase”⁠ — which includes a drive-in show in Concord!

2020 is the year of everything is cancelled, and June will especially suck with SF Pride being cancelled entirely (though some unofficial protest might still take shape in its absence).

The annual Frameline LGBTQ+ film festival that traditionally accompanies your Pride Week proceedings is bringing some normalcy and joy to the final weekend in June. It’s in the form of a four-day, 16-feature mini-Frameline they’re calling the Frameline44 Pride Showcase (June 25-28), to be streamed online, and with some pretty intriguing programming  —  including one documentary screening in person at the West Wind drive-in theater in Concord.

“Pride Month has begun with riots and protests in the face of systemic injustice,” Frameline executive director James Woolley said in a release — which, ironically, quickly pivots to thanking corporate sponsors Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and AT&T. “The LGBTQ+ community is no stranger to these issues and we honor and support all those raising their voices in dissent and demanding equality.”

The Frameline 44 website is confusing as hell and is clearly designed to create as many unwanted and accidental clicks as possible. But we went through and we’ll try to explain the whole deal in plain English.

You are of course most intrigued by the one physical show at Concord’s drive-in, the world premiere of the documentary Ahead of the Curve which details the life and times of trailblazing lesbian magazine Curved. (It’s also going to stream online.) Your ‘Opening Night’ feature is the gay West Hollywood romcom Breaking Fast, Friday night’s documentary feature Denise Ho - Becoming the Song tells the tale of Hong Kong’s first out lesbian pop superstar, and the Closing Night show is Stage Mother, a San Francico-set drag romp with Jackie Beat, Lucy Liu, and Entourage’s Adrian Grenier. (There is an online dance party after the screening.)

But the most interesting bit of this lineup may be Parade, a 14-minute found-footage affair screening for free, documenting San Francisco’s 1971 first Pride parade (apparently Black Sabbath was involved???). The traditional collections of shorts Fun in Boys Shorts and Fun in Girls Shorts are joined by curated short film anthology Transtastic.

Each film comes online at 12:01 a.m. on its screening date, and is available until 11:59 p.m. that evening. But you only get the Q&A afterward if you stream the film at its proper “scheduled” time.

Shows are generally $8-10, with senior and student discounts available (a couple shows are free, and Ahead of the Curve at the Drive-In is $25). A $250 “valid all year” pass will cover not only the four days of the mini-fest, but the full, in-person Frameline in the fall too (assuming it happens). The program is geo-blocked so that you can only stream it in California, and there are all manner of other technical concerns you may have depending on which device you use to watch.

Ticket sales for the Frameline44 Pride Showcase started at noon today, and are available online.

And here's the Pride Showcase official trailer:

Related: Google Could Be Barred From SF Pride For Allowing Homophobic Harassment [SFist]

Image: Transtasctic, “Dungarees,” Abel Rubinstein