It started with a few gay men, a sheet for a screen, and a bunch of homemade films. Today, it's a huge and prestigious international event, held in the week and a half leading up to Pride in the gayest city of all, my hometown of San Francisco.

Frameline has been teasing us all month with its promised new website (their old website really was so Web 1.0), and they finally made it live. And if you go there, you can see all kinds of very beautiful things, such as all the festival trailers back to 1990 (this year's is at the end of this post), a place to buy tickets starting this Friday, an interactive Festival calendar so you can keep track of all the films you want to see and find out before it's too late if two of them are at the exact same moment so you can have yourself cloned, plus breaking news on schedule changes and ticket availability.

It's also very pretty.

So, what's playing this year?

We've already blogged about The Witnesses (showing June 14) and The Bubble (showing June 18), but the one I got all excited reading about is an American film by Robert Gaston called 2 Minutes Later (pictured at top).

I totally want this film to be brilliant, because the description alone makes me all breathless. Frameline describes it as "an episode of 'Silk Stalkings' if it were directed by Robert Mapplethorpe" and it's not impossible that could be the perfect idea for a movie. Here's the plot:

When semi-closeted insurance adjuster Michael Dalmar lands a case in Philadelphia, he reaches out to his estranged twin brother Kyle, a successful — but abusive — photographer in the City of Brotherly Love. When Michael finds Kyle missing and is mistaken for being the swinging photographer himself, he decides to use his brother’s identity to work the Philly art scene for clues. With the help of lesbian repo girl-turned-P.I. Abigail Marks, Michael discovers a long line of jilted male models who could have had it in for Kyle. Danger and drama lurk around every corner, but Michael soon learns to loosen up and enjoy the pleasures of his much naughtier brother’s life.

It's showing Thursday, June 21, 9:30 PM at the Victoria Theater, which is very much the festival's third string venue, so it made me worry this movie won't be as fabulous as it sounds. Still, it's not like I haven't done worse things for much longer periods of time, so I'll probably see it either way.

So check out the new website and the full schedule, and also this year's trailer:

The San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival will launch its fourth decade on Thursday, June 14, with the North American Premiere of The Witnesses (Les Témoins), the latest film from director André Téchiné (Wild Reeds, 1994).

From Frameline:

Paris, 1984. In a cruisey city park, Adrien, a sophisticated, middle-aged doctor, meets Manu, a buoyant 18-year-old. Manu turns down Adrien’s proposition—then asks him to hold his jacket while he joins an orgy in the bushes. Not the best way to start a relationship, yet Adrien takes Manu under his wing. Manu needs guidance, and Adrien comes alive as he tromps around Paris with this energetic newcomer. Adrien’s friend Sarah worries that he’s being taken advantage of, but Adrien disagrees: “You can ask anything of your friends.”