‘Wilde’ gala premiere

Posted on May 1, 2008
Filed Under GLBT, activism, discrimination, event coverage, gay issues, queer issues, stage play
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============= FROM PEOPLE LIKE US ===============

A film that has been banned for the past 11 years, will at last be screened in Singapore. The gala premiere will be a benefit event to raise funds for this year’s Indignation season.

And what an appropriate film it is - Wilde, a highly acclaimed film telling the story of Oscar Wilde, who was and remains the most famous person ever to be convicted under the UK’s “gross indecency” law. That law is the ancestor of our infamous Section 377A.

Oscar Wilde was a celebrated genius of the English stage. His works, including The Importance of Being Earnest, are still performed today.

lido_poster

But he was also gay - and some of you might say ‘but naturally, he being a creative genius and all’.

His greatest love was an upper class young man - Lord Alfred Douglas, whose father, the Marquess of Queensberry, was violently homophobic and who harassed Wilde until he found an opportunity to take him to court. The irony was that it was Wilde who created that opportunity for him.

Yet, Queensberry did not want his son’s name brought up in the trial, and so the case against Wilde was not built around the affair between Wilde and Douglas but built on the testimony of rentboys whom Wilde had been intimate with. If that hypocrisy was not enough, the chattering classes of the day also implicated the foreign minister in the campaign to convict Wilde.

It’s a tale that somehow doesn’t seem far away when we still have Section 377A and the police are still raiding saunas (looking for convenient evidence?)

wilde_at_the_stand
And did you know that the famous expression “the love that dare not speak its name” was coined by none other than Lord Alfred Douglas, in his poem, Two Loves

“Unasked by night; I am true Love, I fill
The hearts of boy and girl with mutual flame.”
Then sighing, said the other, “Have thy will,
I am the love that dare not speak its name.”

Please support this benefit gala on Tuesday, 13 May 2008 at Lido. You can buy tickets ($20 or $50 - the latter with cocktail reception) from Fridae’s website (www.fridae.com/wilde/)

Fridae’s gala premiere is an important fundraiser for Indignation, since Indignation events themselves (scheduled for August 2008) are traditionally free of charge, in order to be accessible to everyone. Tickets are priced at $20 (US$15) and $50 (US$38) - the latter includes a cocktail reception - and are available from Fridae’s movie site www.fridae.com/wilde/index.htm or more directly from Fridae’s movie tickets shop at http://www.fridae.com/shop/cart/home.php?cat=416.

It will help greatly towards another successful Indignation Gay Pride Season.

Please also disseminate this email to as many friends as you can.

People Like Us would like to thank sponsor/organiser Fridae.com, and sponsors Crocodile Men’s Wear and Shaw Theatres.

See also
www.plu.sg
www.plu.sg/indignation
www.fridae.com

images credited to www.plu.sg



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