Sebastiane

Derek Jarman's Sensational Feature Debut

Director Derek Jarman's (Caravaggio, The Tempest) feature film debut Sebastiane lays bare the latent homoeroticism that has always lurked beneath the glossy surface of Hollywood biblical epics. Jarman crafts his slyly lurid yet exquisitely poetic historical drama around the martyrdom of St. Sebastian in the same way that Italian Renaissance painters used the image of St. Sebastian to eroticize the male nude. Though audaciously performed entirely in Latin, and carrying the same visual boldness of Jarman's collaboration with Ken Russell on The Devils, Sebastiane depicts both earthly lust and spiritual yearning with what The Guardian described as "an honesty and directness that's the absolute opposite of camp." Sebastiane's lyricism is supported by one of cult composer Brian Eno's first and best music scores.

Stripped of rank and exiled to a remote Sardinian outpost, Roman soldier and suspected Christian Sebastian (Leonardo Treviglio) becomes the object of his commanding officer Maximus' (Barney James) aggressive desire. As Sebastian turns his back on his fellow soldiers in favor of his own visionary mystical longings, the sun-bleached Mediterranean idyll becomes a psycho-sexual hothouse where predatory desire and religious longing set the stage for a shocking tableau of death and martyrdom.

Sebastiane caused a riot when it premiered at the Locarno Film Festival, and was a surprise hit upon its initial release in the UK. Available for the first time on DVD and video, Sebastiane is both a milestone in British independent film and a pioneering work of modern queer cinema. "The film, in fact," marveled Time Out London, "is one of a kind."