Wednesday May 21 (8pm)
"How did Saint Sebastian die? / Arrows pierced his throat and thigh / which only knew, before that time / the dolors of a concubine," laments Tennessee Williams over the saint whose martyrdom has become iconic in the fledgling field of gay hagiography. Derek Jarman's sun-kissed debut feature might be the queerest take on St. Sebastian, throwing him into a remote Roman prison camp where he plays Billy Budd to a desirous captain. Jarman's Romans bark vulgar Latin and are often nude, but the results are far from the standard sword-and-sandal camp. Sebastiane is really a Yeatsian essay on beauty. Two "ambient screenings" of Jarman's more formally experimental film, In the Shadow of the Sun, bookend tonight's screening.
– Matt Sussman