Sacramento's longest-running film festival has covered coming out, same-sex marriage, gays in the military and just plain living.

The Sacramento International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, the 20th edition of which runs Thursday-Saturday, has evolved along with awareness of issues affecting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people while maintaining its grass-roots origins.

In 1992, military veteran and Sacramento State student Allen Cole approached student activities director Lou Camera about starting a gay film festival. Cole, a member of the university's gay and lesbian student alliance, got the idea from Fresno State, which had just started its own festival.

Camera was on board, and Cole also enlisted the Sac State chapter of gay fraternity Delta Lambda Phi to help fund the event.

The aim, Cole said, was to offer "not just positive portrayals of gays and lesbians but realistic, artistic portrayals – something that was multidimensional and not stereotypes."

This was not long after the release of "Silence of the Lambs," with its cross-dressing killer, and "Basic Instinct," with its bisexual killer. Those films sparked protests by gay and lesbian rights groups. But Sacramento's gay and lesbian audiences did not have access to much else besides these Hollywood films.

"This was before here! or Logo (cable channels), and the video companies that now market (gay) films were just getting started," said Camera, 63, who retired from Sac State a few years ago but has remained with the SIGLFF since its start.

Sid Garcia-Heberger at the Crest Theatre gave Cole a deal on rent and informed him of necessities such as insurance.

"I was aware of the gay and lesbian film festival in San Francisco, and always thought it would be great if we had one," Garcia- Heberger said.

The first festival consisted of one program of six short films. It sold out, with the line to get in stretching down K Street. Six shorts became 17 the next year, and a feature-length movie was added the next. An event started by college kids morphed into a nonprofit with a governing board and programming committee.

Cole, a registered nurse, bowed out after 12 years because of changing work responsibilities. But the all-volunteer festival has always found other Sacramento-area professionals to infuse its ranks.

The festival "has lasted this long because it does a great job with a lot of passion and commitment – instead of money," said Rhyena Halpern, executive director of the Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission, a longtime sponsor of the festival.

The current board president, Todd Lohse, joined the group last year, after talking to board secretary Dawn Deason at a mixer. Lohse, 43, is now in real estate but worked for years at Century movie theaters.

He is new to the board but not the festival. In 1994, he came to see the festival's first feature-length film, director Gregg Araki's raw teen drama "Totally F***ed Up."

"I didn't realize it was the Gay and Lesbian Film Festival," Lohse said with a laugh. He only knew the film was playing at the Crest. Lohse, still questioning his sexuality at the time, found a "safe space" at the screening. "It allowed me to relax."

The festival always has offered a safe place for LGBT people, longtime festival programmer Patti Barcena said.

LGBT visibility and acceptance on a national level have increased tremendously since 1992. Real-world experiences in public movie theaters do not always follow suit.

"I remember sitting in the theater for 'Brokeback Mountain,' and when the two characters had their first kiss, there were people in the audience who went, 'Ick!' " Barcena said. "And that was not that long ago."

One-time programming chairwoman Barcena, 61, and current programming chairman Michael Dennis, 49, both state workers, have helped determine the film lineup for 10 and eight years, respectively. Content has evolved along with awareness of LGBT issues, they said.

"We show a lot of political films to educate people about our history and about current events," Barcena said. In 2008, just before the Proposition 8 vote, SGILFF showed a wedding-themed documentary by Sacramentan Kate Moore. Last year, the festival showcased "A Marine Story," a narrative feature about an officer sent home from Iraq under the military's (since-repealed) "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

LGBT gains have been reflected more subtly as well, Barcena and Dennis said. Twenty years ago, most LGBT films were coming-out stories. Today, there still are transgender coming-out stories, but many films take sexuality and identity as a given, focusing instead on other issues facing characters.

Thursday's feature "Morgan," for example, follows a paraplegic man as he finds love and confronts his "very competitive" nature, Dennis said.

"They are just dramas about people who are gay and lesbian," rather than dramas about being gay and lesbian, Barcena said. "Which to me says a lot about how far we have come and where filmmakers are finally going."

Camera has noticed a big difference in films made by women.

"They have become a lot more fun," Camera said, pointing to Friday's feature "Jamie and Jessie Are Not Together," a romantic comedy with musical interludes, and to the short that precedes it, "The Lesbian Cliché Song." A music video, "Cliché Song" addresses such lesbian clichés as organic-only diets and a profound appreciation of Birkenstock sandals.

Past "women's films were filled with a lot of angst," Camera said, adding that their content perhaps reflected female filmmakers' struggles to get movies made in a male-dominated industry.

The festival does its part to bridge the gender gap. This year, the nonprofit gave San Francisco filmmaker Shani Heckman a grant to complete her project about LGBT foster youth, "America's Most Unwanted." A work-in-progress cut will show in Saturday's shorts program.

The Sacramento festival has outlasted the introduction of gay cable channels and Internet sites offering abundant LGBT content.

That's partly because Sacramento's Gay and Lesbian Film Festival still offers shorts without distribution, that Sacramentans cannot see anywhere else, Barcena said.

Plus, the community spirit that started the festival still holds.

"I knew there were a lot of gay people in the world before I went to my first gay pride parade, but physically being there with people … is different," SIGLFF founder Cole said. The same goes for seeing films with other people instead of on a TV or computer screen.

"Being able to go to a theater and sit down with a lot of people and know they are experiencing some of the same emotions you are – it's still an important thing," Cole said.

20TH SACRAMENTO INTERNATIONAL GAY AND LESBIAN FILM FESTIVAL

7:30 p.m. Thursday: The program starts with the short "The Rescue," which imagines an SPCB (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Boyfriends) shelter from which to choose a new boyfriend. Followed by the feature "Morgan," in which a stubborn man adjusts to his new life as a paraplegic and meets a new love interest.

7:30 p.m. Friday: The short "The Lesbian Cliché Song" trots out tropes, with music. Followed by the feature "Jamie and Jessie Are Not Together," in which a young woman pines for her best friend and roommate as the friend dates other women. Piner and pinee both break into song unexpectedly.

7:30 p.m. Saturday: Shorts program featuring 11 short films

Cost: $10 for individual programs, $30 for a VIP all-festival pass that includes early entry to films and complimentary hors d'oeuvres, wine and champagne

Information: The Crest, 1013 K St., Sacramento, (916) 442-7378; The Beat, 1700 J St., Sacramento; www.tickets.com, (800) 225-2277; www.siglff.org.

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