The Vito Project LGBTQ+ Film Club returns to the iconic Cinema Museum this Spring with a new series of regular screenings providing different generations of LGBTQ+ people and allies an alternative safe space to socialise, watch great films and share ideas.

Screening on Sunday 1st May is Vincente Minnelli’s Tea and Sympathy (1956), followed by an information discussion putting the film into historical content and looking at LGBT+ inclusion in schools today.

Buy your ticket to Tea and Sympathy

All films are screened on Sundays at the Cinema Museum London, once the workplace home of a young Charlie Chaplin. They offer a perfect way to end the weekend watching films in relaxing company. Come meet for social drinks before the screening and join the conversation afterwards.

TEA AND SYMPATHY (1956)

Directed by Vincente Minnelli

Starring Deborah Kerr, Leif Erickson and John Kerr

Followed by post-screening discussion with Birkbeck University’s John Airlie and Diversity Role Models charity

TEA AND SYMPATHY was brought to the screen in lush colour and CinemaScope by Vincente Minnelli, one of Classic Hollywood’s most flamboyant directors, whose An American In Paris and Gigi were Oscar-winning hits. Let’s not forget he had also been married to Judy Garland and yes, is Liza’s father. Adapted for the screen from his own play by Robert Anderson, this is regarded as one of the era’s most sensitive, hard-hitting portrayals of the corrosive effect of homophobia and toxic masculinity.

Seventeen-year-old Tom Robinson Lee (John Kerr, who won a Golden Globe for his portrayal), a new senior at an all boys’ prep school, finds himself at odds with the machismo culture of his classmates who love sports, roughhouse, fantasise about girls, and worship their coach, Bill Reynolds (Leif Erickson). Tom prefers classical music, goes to the theatre, and generally seems to be more at ease in the company of women.

Tormented for his ‘unmanly’ qualities and called ‘sister boy’ Tom is treated unfeelingly by his father who believes a man should be manly. However, the headmaster’s wife (Deborah Kerr, screen legend of From Here To Eternity, The King And I) sympathises with him, but her efforts to help only lead to confronting her own insecurities about her marriage.

After the screening there’s an audience discussion led by John Airlie, Associate Lecturer at Birkbeck, University of London, who adds some historical context of the film and on LGBTQ+ inclusion in schools with Diversity Role Models charity.

THE VITO PROJECT LGBTQ+ FILM CLUB BOOKING DETAILS

Buy your ticket to Tea and Sympathy

Time: Door to venue opens at 5.00pm for a 6.00 screening start time.

Location: Cinema Museum: 2 Dugard Way, London SE11 4TH

Venue accessibility: The Cinema Museum is level access. There is a lift, and an accessible toilet large enough for a motorised wheelchair, with an easy lock and handrails. Some of the interior doors are heavy. There is parking available at the Cinema Museum. The building does not have a hearing loop. Please send us a message if you have any questions about accessibility.

Social: Follow on FB @VITOProject and IG @vitofilmclub

About The Vito Project LGBTQ+ Film Club:

The popular series has been running at The Cinema Museum since 2015, promoting a safe space to promote dialogue between different generations of LGBTQ+ people, allies and film lovers. It takes its name after Vito Russo (1945-1990), New York-native a gay rights activist, film historian and author best known for his book THE CELLULOID CLOSET a ground-breaking chronicle of the LGBTQ+ experience in film. Russo famously screened movies in a space for them to be discussed and debated, and the Project continues to honour his tradition at the historic Cinema Museum London.