Frameline Film Fest's Allegra Madsen, Part 2

In Part 2, we pick up where we left off in Part 1. Allegra was bartending at Second City in Chicago. The day of her graduation ceremony, at Columbia College Chicago, she packed up all her belongings and drove to LA with a friend.

Allegra really wanted to be in California. Not yet totally sure about what she was gonna do, she took the plunge, so to speak. She'd realized that she wasn't going to pursue art. But she figured, correctly, that in addition to the warmer climate, there would be opportunities to seize in Los Angeles. But Allegra soon found that the challenges of a pre-smartphone Southern California were overwhelming.

But she gave it a go. Allegra managed to get what she refers to today as "the worst job she's ever had in her life"—taking school photos of kids. On September 11, 2001, as planes hit the Twin Towers on the other side of the continent, Allegra was at a school in LA taking photos of schoolchildren.

Later that day, she had a job interview that, of course, required driving. The freeways were empty, which is an eerie sight. But she got that job. And that's the story of how Allegra Madsen became an art handler.

Following a couple of years hanging art (Warhol's Mao and Brillo Boxes among the art Allegra handled), she dabbled in freelance work, putting art up on walls in the homes of Los Angeles billionaires among them. Several years into that, Allegra started to feel that energy—this time, pushing her away from LA.

She packed up her red sports car again (a 1988 Porsche, by the way) and headed to The Bay. Going back to the time in her life when she immersed herself in books, Beat writers caught Allegra's imagination. She recounts her first visit to San Francisco and her eventual move north. Like me, she had no idea that she'd still be here all these decades later.

It took Allegra some time to "unpack," so to speak. She moved around The Bay a little, before eventually settling back a block from her first spot in Oakland, where she lives today.

She went to school at CCA (then known as CCAC) and studied curatorial practice. It's where she discovered and got really into social art practices, which she goes into in our talk. "Using art to build community," essentially. Her thesis project took place on Third Street, just as the light rail was being built along that corridor. Her thesis exhibition took place at the Bayview Opera House.

A few years after getting her Master's degree, Allegra opened a cafe in Temescal in Oakland. The neighborhood was rapidly gentrifying at the time, and she wanted to have a space where folks from many different walks of life could visit and have a good experience.

Allegra sold the café after about five years. She pivoted back to art and event planning. Most of her work took the form of events in the Bayview. And part of that event planning involved movie programming. This led to a role at the BVOH, where she did more movie showings.

During her time at the opera house, she began to partner with Frameline. In 2021, she joined the film fest org as programming director. It was the first year since the pandemic started, and Allegra believes part of why she was hired is that she had proven that she could program movies in "weird" places. They hosted a movie as part of Pride that summer at Oracle Park and did some drive-ins (remember those?).

In late 2023, Allegra became interim executive director of Frameline. She assumed the permanent job this February.

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We end the podcast with Allegra's take on our theme this season: Keep it local.

​We recorded this podcast at Frameline Film Fest's offices in South of Market in November 2024.