Oat Montien opens 'Sala Lecture' with the world of porn and queer underground film

Fancy a night that treats desire as art rather than something to whisper about? A good film about longing rarely stops at the body. It reaches for love, dreams, identity and the little private spaces people once carved out just to be themselves.

That is the spirit behind 'Sala Leture', a new run of talks and screenings from Sala Saneha that opens its first edition with queer artist Oat Montien. He walks us through the world of erotic cinema and the American queer underground via three key figures, James Bidgood, Kenneth Anger and Steven Arnold. Each one conjures lush, surreal dreamscapes from almost nothing (Bidgood shoots much of Pink Narcissus inside a cramped New York flat), making private fantasy tangible enough to touch.

This is not a chat about 'porn' in the literal sense. The evening looks at the work through art and history, tracing the knotty ties between imagination, hidden lives, cult belief and a scene that thrives on the fringes.

Because in certain eras, simply loving, dreaming or picturing a world you actually want to live in counts as resistance. Across two hours, the session asks us not only to watch, but to look back at human wanting itself, the delicate stuff that is deeply personal and completely universal, still travelling across time to reach us now.

Catch it at Sala Saneha on Saturday, August 22 from 7.30pm-9.30pm. Tickets are B350 via ZipEvent.