About

Derek Jarman (1942–1994) is Britain's most singular director and one of the most compelling artists to have explored the moving image. In his short but expansive career, he completed 11 feature films that eschew conventional narrative, and more than 60 Super-8 and 16mm montage films. His cinema tackled sexuality, history and politics without compromise and examinded the creative process itself with a deeply affecting sensibility. In addition to his work in theatre and cinema, Jarman maintained his practice as a painter, wrote a series of memoirs and diaries, made music videos and was a passionate gardener. Twenty years after his death from AIDS-related conditions, his films, writing and paintings constitute, more than ever, a vital statement against cultural conservatism, and the will to be a self-determining artist.

Jarman studied painting at Kings College London and at the Slade School of Art and saw filmmaking as another form of painting. He applied his skills and interest in theatre and architecture to his role as production designer for Ken Russell's films The Devils 1971 and Savage Messiah 1972, as well the Royal Ballet's production of Jazz Calendar 1968. These experiences alongside his interaction with London's gay milieu gave him the confidence to begin developing his own projects, including some of the first truly independent British features. While his filmography attests to a strong personal vision, Jarman also valued the collaborative process over individual control. Throughout his career he worked with a key group of creative collaborators, including producer James Mackay, actress Tilda Swinton, production designer Christopher Hobbs, composer Simon Fischer Turner and costume designer Sandy Powell.

Working with limited resources from the late 1970s to early 1990s, Jarman developed a unique cinematographic practice that turned those restraints into a signature aesthetic – what he conceived as 'a cinema of small gestures'. Jarman enjoyed the autonomy and portability of shooting with his Nizo 480 and Beaulieu Super-8 cameras and filmed at 3-6 frames per second (as opposed to the usual range of 16-24) to extend the duration of film stock. This made for a more economical shooting process and created a visual language similar to stop-motion photography, wherein images appear suspended in time or flicker beyond comprehension. Jarman experimented with different approaches to re-filming the fragile Super-8 stock and with the aid of U-matic recording technology, developed film/video hybrids – a new vocabulary of 'magic realism' – created with video compositing, superimpositions, saturated colours, and an emphasis on the materiality of film and video stock.

After publicly disclosing his HIV-positive status in 1986, Jarman worked under the spectre of death, writing and directing with urgency. His work took on a political dimension, aimed at tackling the cultural reversals occurring in British society under Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government. While he would refer to himself as 'small-c conservative', preferring the age of Shakespeare to the plight of contemporary England, his strident politics were always on show and his artistic vision was nothing short of revolutionary. Jarman's storytelling was anachronistic, uniting the historical and contemporary in costuming, staging and dialogue, and similarly, throughout his career he sought to connect aspects of his personal history with public history. Music journalist Jon Savage has commented that Jarman's subversive statements about British society 'gave both his life and work a sharpened focus' and made him 'a standard for those whose every fibre revolted against the power politics of the early to mid-1980s.'

Never one to allow his personal and public life to diverge, Jarman was one of the few openly Queer filmmakers during his lifetime and was unapologetic about his quest to represent homosexuality onscreen. Taking cues from filmmakers Pier Paolo Pasolini and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, his films are dominated by stories of exiles and outsiders – from Saint Sebastian to William Shakespeare, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Benjamin Britten, Wilfred Owen, Christopher Marlowe and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Jarman's project was to re-mythologise these homosexual artists, writers and intellectuals within cultural history and uncover the strong Queer sensibility latent within the history of British art and film. Driven by the knowledge that his time was limited, Jarman was also an outspoken activist and used his life and work to diminish the stigma associated with living with HIV and rally against the threat of Section 28, the 1988 British law introduced by Thatcher's government that legislated against the promotion of homosexuality. He died of bronchial pneumonia shortly after his 52nd birthday on February 19, 1994. Jarman's parting words in his last memoir At Your Own Risk: A Saint's Testament (1993) read:

I am tired tonight. My eyes are out of focus, my body droops under the weight of the day, but as I leave you Queer lads let me leave you singing. I had to write of sad time as a witness ― not to cloud your smiles ― please read the cares of the world that I have locked in these pages; and after, put this book aside and love. May you of a better future, love without care and remember we loved too. As the shadows closed in, the stars came out. I am in love.

Derek Jarman was the author of several books including his autobiography Dancing Ledge (1984, reprinted 2010 University of Minnesota Press); the journals Modern Nature (1991, reprinted 1992 Vintage Press) and Smiling In Slow Motion (2000, reprinted 2001 Vintage Press); a collection of poetry A Finger in the Fishes Mouth (1972, reprinted 2014 Test Centre); and the essayistic volumes The Last of England (1987, reprinted as Kicking the Pricks, 1996/2010 University of Minnesota Press); At Your Own Risk: A Saint's Testament (1992, reprinted 2010 University of Minnesota Press); and Chroma: A Book of Colour – June '93 (1994, reprinted 1995 Vintage Classics). Published scripts with commentary by Jarman include Derek Jarman's Caravaggio (1986); War Requiem (1989); Queer Edward II (1991); Wittgenstein: The Terry Eagelton Script, The Derek Jarman Film (1993); Blue: Text of a film by Derek Jarman (1994) and Up In The Air: Collected Film Scripts (1996). Derek Jarman's Sketchbooks (2013) is a recent monograph that documents for the first time the vast number of sketchbooks and visual journals documenting his working process. Derek Jarman: A Biography (1996, reprinted 2011 University of Minnesota Press) is a definitive account of Jarman's life and work by Tony Peake.

Throughout the program, pre-cinema music comes from a reissue of Robin Rimbaud's album The Garden is Full of Metal: Homage to Derek Jarman (1997). Using recordings of Jarman's voice as well as location recordings around his home, the album is a collection of memories, taking recordings from spaces that Jarman inhabited or experienced - from the walk to the sea's edge from his cottage in Dungeness through to the roar of London congestion around his Charing Cross flat - to create a fluid, elegiac sound portrait, a form of resonant landscape painting that weaves through recordings of Jarman's own voice.

'Derek Jarman' curated by José Da Silva, Australian Cinémathèque. Film notes by Da Silva and quotes by Jarman sourced from the reprinted editions listed above.