Rotting in the Sun and Other September Screenings in SF

One of Frameline47’s hottest tickets, Rotting in the Sun lands in theatres and in your homes this weekend via MUBI. Starring director Sebastián Silva and social media star Jordan Firstman as loose versions of themselves alongside a hilarious Catalina Saaverda, Rotting in the Sun is a bold, audacious satire chock-full of explicit sex, frontal nudity, and heavy drug intake. If you’re into new experiences with strangers, catch it starting tonight at the Alamo Drafthouse. If intimate settings are more your fancy, you can stream it exclusively on MUBI (almost globally) starting tomorrow… alongside a program titled Chaos Theory: A Sebastián Silva Retrospective featuring several of the director’s prior provocations like Nasty Baby with Kristen Wiig and Tunde Abebimpe and his Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winning The Maid (La nana) which also stars Saaverda.

For a limited time only, MUBI is offering our US followers an exclusive 30-day trial of their robust streaming library. Full of cinematic treasures and exciting discoveries from around the globe, you can find (or rediscover) plenty of past FL titles including (and pictured above) Amanda Kramer’s Please Baby Please (2022), Christophe Honoré’s Winter Boy (2022), C.B. Yi’s Moneyboys (2021), Shirley Clarke’s Portrait of Jason (1967), Bertrand Mandico’s Apocalypse After (2018), and Éri Sarmet’s A Wild Patience Has Taken Me Here (2021) among others. Browsing MUBI’s Pride Unprejudiced: LGBTQ+ Cinema collection is a great place to start.

There are a few other upcoming screenings this month around San Francisco worth highlighting. Excited for SF LeatherWeek and Folsom Street Fair?! Then we’ve got just what you need! On Saturday, September 16, the Balboa Theater will present a 6-film retrospective of the cinematic magician and mythical artist Kenneth Anger (who died earlier this year at the age of 96). The 2 Act program includes the director’s most infamous work, Scorpio Rising (1963), which he described as “a death-mirror held up to American culture — Thanatos in chrome, black leather, and bursting jeans.” Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954), Puce Moment (1949), Invocation of My Demon Brother (1969), Rabbit’s Moon (1972), and Anger’s first surviving film Fireworks (1947) will round out the program.

Be sure to catch a pair of LeatherWeek essentials at the Roxie, starting with Dome Karukoski’s Tom of Finland (2017) on Monday, the 18th, and the late William Friedkin’s controversial classic Cruising (1980) starring Al Pacino on Tuesday, the 19th. For those still planning their Folsom looks, there’s no shortage of fashion inspiration in each of these three movie nights.

Starring Ann-Margret, Oliver Reed, Tina Turner (RIP), Elton John, Jack Nicholson, and Roger Daltrey, Ken Russell’s Tommy (1975), a visually explosive adaptation of The Who’s rock opera recently restored in 4K, plays for two nights on Wednesday, September 20 and Thursday, September 21 at The Vogue Theater. 

Another visually stunning restoration playing this month is Chen Kaige’s ravishing Farewell My Concubine (1993), which currently has four dates lined up at the Roxie (though check their website beforehand, as it looks as though the Saturday, September 30 screening has already sold out). Farewell My Concubine became the first Chinese film (and only to date) to win the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, though it tied with Jane Campion’s The Piano (which set its own record as the first film directed by a woman to win the Palme). Distributed by Film Movement, this 30th anniversary 4K restoration will be the first time US and Canadian audiences will have the chance to see the complete, uncut, 170-minute-long version of the film. Like so many other great films in the 90s, Farewell My Concubine was inexplicably butchered by Harvey Weinstein and his company Miramax for its American release (in this case by over 20 minutes).

Enjoy the rest of your September, and we’ll see you at the movies and on the streets at both the Folsom Street Fair and the Castro Street Fair in the coming weeks!