Supreme Court decision looms over 49th Frameline LGBTQ+ film festival

San Francisco Chronicle​

19 hours ago

As Frameline's 49th film festival nears, LGBTQ+ rights are under assault from federal and state governments, and drastic cuts in funding are affecting all arts and LGBTQ+ organizations.
It's a scary time, but the San Francisco International LGBTQ+ Film Festival, the world's largest and longest-running film festival of its kind, is defiant.
'We need to really lay the groundwork out there,' Frameline Executive Director Allegra Madsen told the Chronicle ahead of the festival, which runs Wednesday, June 18, through June 28. 'We need to stand up for one another inside the community and also we need to look outside the community for effective allyship, one that is actually rooted in supporting the queer community.'
Madsen and her team have programmed a proactive slate of issue-oriented films for the event that sends a clear message: The queer community isn't going anywhere. No film embodies that spirit more than ' Heightened Scrutiny,' Sam Feder's ripped-from-the-headlines documentary about American Civil Liberties Union attorney Chase Strangio, the first out transgender person to argue before the Supreme Court.
A recipient of Frameline's 2025 Completion Fund grant, the film is scheduled to make its California premiere in the festival's traditional 'First Friday' slot on June 20, with a screening at American Conservatory Theater's 1,000-seat Toni Rembe Theater, followed by a party at Charmaine's, the Proper Hotel's rooftop bar on Market Street.
Produced by former San Francisco resident Amy Scholder, 'Heightened Scrutiny' follows Strangio during his involvement in United States v. Skrmetti, in which he is fighting to overturn Tennessee's ban on gender-affirming care for transgender youth. Strangio argued the case before the Supreme Court on Dec. 4, and audio of the arguments (SCOTUS does not allow cameras) is used in the film, which made its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January.
To add to the drama, the high court's decision is expected to be handed down during Frameline.
'We felt this urgency to get the film out while the decision was being deliberated so that the public could really understand what the stakes are and hopefully understand the kind of urgency of coalition and, regardless of the outcome, just what this will mean,' Scholder said. 'Nine human beings at the Supreme Court are deciding the fate of the civil rights of a community and the beginning of, or the continuation of, the chipping away of bodily autonomy for all Americans. Whatever the decision is, we set out to show how we got here, what contributed to this moment.'
Feder, who spoke to the Chronicle along with Scholder during a video interview, first met Strangio while making his documentary ' Disclosure: Trans Lives on Screen ' (2020), about Hollywood's depiction of transgender people.
'The ways in which he spoke about the connection to the rise of visibility and the rise of social and legislative violence really struck me because that was the reason I made that film,' Feder said. 'I wanted people to start preparing for the inevitable backlash.'
That backlash has arrived, and with intensity. Not just from the government, but, as 'Heightened Scrutiny' alleges, the mainstream press. Strangio explains in the documentary how headlines about trans issues — both in the New York Times and in other newspapers — subtly changed over a relatively short time leading up to the case.
At issue in the Supreme Court case and in media coverage is the use of hormone and puberty blockers, which have been prescribed to children since the 1980s for various conditions that have nothing to do with gender changes, such as early onset puberty.
'This is a framing issue,' Feder said. 'This is not about unfairness or a threat. If you want to make things fair based on blood tests and hormone tests, you should be doing that across the board, right? Not just for this one class of people. So this is about bigotry. So how we frame these stories creates a very specific narrative that people run with, and that's what I wish the press would do better.'
Frameline felt 'Heightened Scrutiny' was so important that it introduced a pay-it-forward initiative to provide free tickets to transgender and nonbinary attendees (details at www.frameline.org).
The screening, which Feder and Scholder plan to attend, will be preceded by a performance by the New Voices Bay Area TIGQ (Transgender, Intersex, Genderqueer) Choir.
'The outcome of this case is going to affect all Americans,' Feder said. 'People think this is just about a small community that they don't really care about, and they want to talk about other things. But we're seeing the beginnings of coalition building about reproductive rights and trans rights and immigrant rights. This is all about bodily autonomy, what we have the right to do, what our right is to move through space.'