QUEER CINEMA CLUB presents SEBASTIANE

Every month at the Paradise Theatre, curator and host Peter Knegt is offering queers (and anyone who loves them) a classic queer film, special guests and performers, and some good old fashioned drinks and conversation in the Paradise’s stunning lobby bar. Each film is paired with a different local queer artist, who will design an original poster for the screening.

Derek Jarman's (Caravaggio) feature film debut (co-directing with Paul Humfress), SEBASTIANE is a "one of a kind" (Time Out London) historical drama which lays bare the latent homoeroticism that has always lurked beneath the glossy surface of Hollywood biblical epics. Telling the story of the martyrdom of St. Sebastian in the same way that Italian Renaissance painters used the image of Sebastian to eroticize the male nude, Jarman depicts both earthly lust and spiritual yearning with "an honesty and directness that's the absolute opposite of camp." (The Guardian).

Stripped of rank and exiled to a remote Sardinian outpost, Roman soldier and suspected Christian Sebastian becomes the object of his commanding officer aggressive desire. As Sebastian turns his back on his fellow soldiers in favor of his own mystical longings, the sun-bleached Mediterranean idyll becomes a psycho-sexual hothouse where lust sets the stage for a shocking tableau of death and martyrdom.

Audaciously spoken in Latin and supported by one of cult composer Brian Eno's best music scores, SEBASTIANE is both a milestone of British independent film and a pioneering work of queer cinema.

(Courtesy of Kino Lorber)

Wednesday February 21st, 8 PM/7:30 PM Doors

General Admission $15.00 + HST/eventbrite fees

Door tickets are available for purchase on the day of screening. Refunds can be requested up to 12 hours before the screening. All refunds must be requested and processed through eventbrite.

‍