Queer Classics on Film: Sebastiane

Join us for the second of our after-hours film screenings of queer films. Lose yourself in immersive vulgar Latin with our screening of Derek Jarman’s Sebastiane (1976), a film which frames a loose retelling of the story of a Christian saint within an explicitly homoerotic gaze.

Before the film starts, there will be a quick intro by Maria Wyke, Professor of Latin at UCL. Alongside histories of ancient gender and the body, Wyke has written about ancient Rome in cinema, and is currently running a research project called Museum of Dreamworlds that investigates all the silent films surviving in the National Film Archive which concern ancient Greece or Rome

We’ll provide popcorn for the screening and a glass of wine (or a non-alcoholic beverage) during discussion in our atmospheric Cast Gallery when the film is over.

This film is rated 18+, so all event attendees must be adults.

Arrivals: from 6pm

Intro: 6.10

Curtain up: 6.20

Drinks and discussion: 7.45

Derek Jarman’s debut feature film is a bare retelling of the martyrdom of the Christian saint Sebastian. The film opens in the Roman court of the decadent Emperor Diocletian, where Sebastian enjoys a favoured position as Captain of the Palace Guard. After he intervenes to stop the murder of one of the Emperor’s catamites, Sebastian is exiled to a remote coastal garrison. Following his refusal to fight for the Roman Empire, the pacifist Sebastian is sentenced to death by arrows.

The film presents an adoring, sometimes vulgar love letter to the male form and homosexual desire. Often hailed as an early gay classic, Sebastiane marked a major milestone for openly queer representation on film. ‘At last’, one critic wrote in Gay Left after the film’s release, ‘a film we can call our own?’ The figure of Sebastian, long inflected with queer subtexts in the history of art, is cinematically repositioned by Jarman as an icon for a new era. The film – with its all-Latin dialogue – explores the appeal of antiquity for queer worldmaking.

• Room 1.02 and the Cast Gallery is on the first floor.
• Please book a wheelchair-accessible ticket if you use a wheelchair.
• We provide step-free access via our lift. To use the lift please call 01223 330402 on your arrival and we will send down a member of staff to assist you.
• An accessible toilet is available on the ground floor.
• Seating is available in our Cast Gallery.
• Find out more about Museum Access.
• Please contact us on 01223 330402 or email museum@classics.cam.ac.uk if you have any questions or concerns about accessibility.

What: film screening followed by a reception in our atmospheric Cast Gallery

Who: Adults

£££: free