Sundance: ‘Sweetheart’ Director Luke Wintour on Secret Gay Life in 1720s England and His Aunt Anna Wintour’s Support of His ‘Queerness and Filmmaking’
Marc Malkin Senior Editor, Culture and Events Long before – like centuries before — “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” there were Molly Houses, queer underground clubs that operated in London in the 1700s.
Yes, the 1700s. By day, these houses were regular coffeehouses, but at night, they turned into secret same-sex watering holes that included drag performances, sexual activity and more.
There were up to more than two dozen houses throughout London at the height of their popularity. Molly Houses — molly was a slang term for gay men in 18th century England — are brought to life in “Sweetheart,” a scripted short about a young man (Eben Figueiredo) being introduced to London’s secret queer subculture in 1723.
Directed by Luke Wintour and written by Alastair Curtis, the film premieres Thursday, Jan. 23, at the Sundance Film Festival. “There are some people who say that Molly Houses is where camp or the notion of camp began,” Wintour told me during a Zoom video interview from his London-area home. “It’s definitely where drag in the U.K.
