One of the world’s leading experts on LGBTQ film history, Jenni Olson is a queer film historian and archivist, writer and filmmaker. Her remarkable 16mm urban landscape essay films have been widely acclaimed for their unique approach to cinematic storytelling. In attendance from Nov 15 -19, Olson presents a very special two-part series. The first part showcases a selection of amazing archival 35mm, 16mm and Super 8 LGBTQ film prints from the HFA’s Jenni Olson Queer Film Collection—ranging from vintage feature films to ephemeral educational shorts to classic movie trailers to home movies. Since most of this material is otherwise unavailable, these shows present a rare opportunity to view an eclectic array of materials amassed over the course of Olson’s nearly forty-year career as a film collector, archivist and queer indie film industry veteran. (In 2021 she was recognized with the prestigious Special Teddy Award at the Berlin Film Festival for her decades of work championing LGBTQ film and filmmakers.) The second part of the series offers a retrospective of Olson’s own work as an acclaimed experimental filmmaker. In her singular, first-person essay films Olson reflects on butch identity, love and longing, politically significant histories and cinema itself—all toward an artistic vision she describes as a “completely impossible and yet partially successful effort to stop time.”

Highlights of the series include Olson’s curated vintage 35mm trailer programs: Neo Homo Promo and Afro Promo, offering a whirlwind ride through LGBTQ and Black film history respectively, as they also revel in the joy of the ultimate cinematic three-minute art form. Two programs of shorts showcase such highlights as the now legendary, but previously lost 1967 short, Queens at Heart—which Olson unearthed and worked with the Outfest UCLA Legacy Project to have restored—and an excerpt from a 1955 filmed therapy session with a gay man, The Case of Mr. Lin (featuring the pioneering psychiatrist Dr. Carl Rogers). And don’t miss the opportunity to see two unbelievably wild, queer features never available on DVD or the Internet: Sandra Bernhard as a bisexual seductress golf pro in Dallas Doll (1994) and Pamela Adlon as a teenage girl who gets her wish to be a boy in the 1986 comedy Something Special (Willy/Milly).
The HFA is especially pleased to present Olson’s two feature-length essay films: The Joy of Life (2005) and The Royal Road (2015), which both premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, as well as her celebrated shorts Blue Diary (1997) and 575 Castro St. (2009). When she was honored with a retrospective of her films on the Criterion Channel in 2021, Filmmaker Magazine described Olson as “a director who understands the restorative power of nostalgia and reflection better than any other” and raved that “encountering her engaging and moving essay films is about as pleasurable an experience as one can have watching cinema.” 

After years of working with Jenni Olson and her magnificent archive, the HFA is thrilled to finally screen and discuss these important films and ephemera with the archivist extraordinaire in person throughout the series.