Jennifer M Kroot’s film Hunky Jesus, narrated by George Takei, is the opening event of this year’s BFI Flare, the festival of LGBTQ+ moviemaking. It is about an outrageous annual talent contest for the hunkiest Jesus-a-like, whose contestants are often oiled, with the kind of buttocks not mentioned in the New Testament, and sometimes engage in pole dance-type cavorting around the cross, declaring that they want to be nailed and rise again.
It is organised every Easter in San Francisco as part of an exuberant, defiant celebration by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a group of queer drag nuns, performance artists and activists who, with great stamina and commitment, apparently never come out of character. And all in the cheeky spirit of Tom Lehrer’s comic song The Vatican Rag.
