Margaret Cho

her to come to a screening of “Valley of the Dolls” where we would interview her. She was like, “Oh, nobody wants to see that movie!” I’m like, “What? Are you crazy [laughs]? Everybody loves that movie.” She was such a person to get to know and to work with. What an incredible actor and a lovely woman.

You play Nurse Nina in the Apple TV+ educational children’s series “Helpsters.” What do you like best about that?

The creatures. All of the puppets are so cute. I love working with puppeteers because they’re actually very animated people. They’re so charming and beautiful and fun, and fun to be with. I love (out actor) Rebecca Henderson (who plays Farmer Flynn). We played girlfriends, and now we’re married on the show, we’re married on “Helpsters.” When I see her, I’m like, “We’re doing so good in our relationship!” She was my girlfriend in the (2022) movie “Sex Appeal” on Hulu, and she and I are married on “Helpsters.” She’s my most successful relationship.

by Brian Bromberger

The 22nd San Francisco DocFest will be held June 1-11 with 39 features and 47 shorts at the Roxie Theater. Artist Q & A sessions will be both in-person and virtual ondemand. The festival has come a long way from its premiere as a three-day event in an empty church in Union Square to its present 11-day incarnation presenting “the most weird and wonderful aspects of real life to the big screen.” DocFest always offers a smattering of LGBTQ-related films this year with six features plus nine short films.

Colombian filmmaker Theo Montoya’s hybrid doc, “Anhell 69,” opens with the 2016 signing of a peace agreement that ended decades of Colombian civil war, yet the country remains a violent place of despair for LGBTQ and young people despite legalized same-sex marriage. We witness a hearse being driven down a deserted highway and the corpse seems to be the director setting the film’s grim mood.

In 2017 Montoya wanted to direct a feature movie, a gory zombie/vampire tale, and interviews Medellion queer street kids for the roles. Their answers to questions such as, “What do you do,” are depressing such as the reply “scrounge around for money.” Sex, drugs, and doing drag in clubs provides respite from all the gloom.

Before shooting starts, two of the actors have died from suicide and narcotic overdoses, including the lead Camilio, who was known by his Instagram name Anhell69. The film is transgressive, angry, bleak, brutal, nihilistic, where there’s nothing else to live for but the here and now, since there’s no future. Still “Anhell69” is a must-see film because it shows the dire results when marginalized people are ignored or persecuted.

“The Ruth Brinker Story” is a 23-minute love letter to the now legendary local founder of Project Open Hand which has provided meals for HIV/AIDS patients since 1985. At age 63 and a retired food-service worker, she started cooking meals in her own kitchen, then delivered them to ill neighbors. Many of her clients weren’t dying so much of AIDS as malnutrition and loneliness. She moved her base of operations to Trinity Episcopal Church but the late gay Ambassador Jim Hormel found a more accessible building for her on Market Street. Other volunteers and gay bars raised money for its operation. This short eulogizes a compassionate caring hero who deserves to be celebrated.

“Sean Dorsey Dance: Dreaming Trans and Queer Future,” fuses dance and documentary in a profile of the local trailblazing transgender choreographer and activist. Dorsey moved to San Francisco in the early 2000s attracted to the city’s history of trans and queer resistance