Скачать или смотреть Introducing a NEW LGBTQ+ History Themed Book Club - starting with BENT on 20 January 2025

"With ignorance comes fear, from fear comes bigotry. Education is the key to acceptance" - Kathleen Patel

While this channel will remain dedicated to vintage and antiques, I'm taking 2025 to re-focus my efforts on why I started it to begin with - to educate. And part of that education needs to include what's important to me - my existence as a gay man.

One part of my new focus will be starting an LGBTQ+ themed book club focusing on the history of its people and their (our) acceptance over time. It may not be limited only to books, and it definitely will not be limited to NonFiction, so we'll see how it rolls out over time.

As explained in this video, I am announcing that the January selection will be BENT by Martin Sherman. Admittedly, it's not technically a "book", it's a play in script form (so you can still read it!), but there's also a film version from 1997 starring Clive Owen which may make it more accessible for those interested in participating.

And I do hope people participate - it's FREE and anyone can join in (whether a member of the LGBTQ+ community, an ally, or just someone interested in education and history!) The first "book club" will be a LIVE CHAT taking place on this channel on 20 January 2025 at 8pm eastern and viewers will be able to add comments and questions in the live chat. We will plan to run it for about an hour.

Copies of the script may be available from your local library or can be ordered online for less than $20. The movie version (and we will discuss both) is available for free (as of 1 December 2024) on the following streaming services: Plex, Tubi, Peacock and Pluto. While the movie version does not appear to be available on YouTube, there are many trailers and some (illegal) bootlegs of stage productions of the script from across the world.

about the book:
Synopsis from Wikipedia:
Bent (sometimes stylized as BENT) is a 1979 British-American play by Martin Sherman. It revolves around the persecution of gays in Nazi Germany, and takes place during and after the Night of the Long Knives.

The title of the play refers to the slang word "bent" used in some European countries to refer to homosexuals.

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(Description by Applause Books). "Martin Sherman's worldwide hit play Bent took London by storm in 1979 when it was first performed by the Royal Court Theatre, with Ian McKellen as Max (a character written with the actor in mind). The play itself caused an uproar. "It educated the world," Sherman explains. "People knew about how the Third Reich treated Jews and, to some extent, gypsies and political prisoners. But very little had come out about their treatment of homosexuals." Gays were arrested and interned at work camps prior to the genocide of Jews, gypsies, and handicapped, and continued to be imprisoned even after the fall of the Third Reich and liberation of the camps. The play Bent highlights the reason why - a largely ignored German law, Paragraph 175, making homosexuality a criminal offense, which Hitler reactivated and strengthened during his rise to power."

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From a TheatreMania interview with the playwright:
What made you decide, all those years ago, to write a play about the persecution of homosexuals during the Holocaust?
I stumbled upon a little bit of information about what happened to gays in Nazi Germany, which nobody knew about. There was a law in Germany that had been on the books for years, outlawing homosexuality, and no one paid attention to it. When the Nazis came in, they just implemented it. That's how it started.