About

"How to make a film of a gay love affair and get it commissioned. Find a dusty old play and violate it. It is difficult enough to be queer, but to be a queer in cinema is almost impossible. Heterosexuals have ****ed up the screen so completely that there's hardly room for us to kiss there. That's really the only message this play has. **** poetry. The best lines in Marlowe sound like pop songs and the worst, well we've tried to spare you them…"
Derek Jarman, Queer Edward II (1991)

"The film Edward II came out at a very important, significant time in queer history. It was an incredibly important film in that it educated a lot queer people about a fragment of our own queer history: the homophobia that lay behind the persecution of Edward II and Piers Gaveston and their untimely deaths. We were also impressed that Derek was able to relate it to the modern day and to project to a straight audience an important message against homophobia, but doing it is artistic and cultural way that had a broad appeal. This is one of Derek's great attributes. He was able to make serious political messages, contemporary and relevant political messages, appealing through history and art to a wider audience."
Peter Tatchell, Derek's Edward (2009)

Based on Christopher Marlowe's English Renaissance play, Edward II tells the story of the fall of King Edward II of England (1284–1327). Following his father's death, newly crowned Edward (Steven Waddington) sends for his lover, the lower-class Piers Gaveston (Andrew Tiernan), causing his barons lead by the ambitious Lord Mortimer (Nigel Terry) and icy wife Queen Isabella (Tida Swinton) to conspire to overthrow and assassinate him. While Edward's homosexuality is a subtext in Marlow's play, in Derek Jarman's anachronistic adaptation, it is the core of the story's account of vengeful and obsessive love. Jarman draws Marlowe's classical text set in 1592 into a contemporary context and positions it as an indictment of homophobic violence in contemporary Britain. Edward II was made during a period of highly pitched moral hysteria surrounding HIV/AIDS, and government sanctioned police brutality consenting homosexuals. To reflect this Jarman dedicates the film to "the repeal of all anti-gay laws, particularly Section 28" and invited members of the English queer activist group OutRage! to be extras and form a picket line outside Edward's castle. For Jarman, Edward is a martyred victim of repression and injustice, while Gaveston and Isabella – both monsters in their own ways – are the products of the monstrous society they inhabit.

With its limited budget, only four sets were built for the production: monumental and barren spaces where everything is created with lighting. The use of the old Bray studios of Hammer Films inspired Jarman to incorporate moments of Gothic horror. One of the film's most tender moments comes courtesy of Eurhythmics singer Annie Lennox as she serenades the two lovers, performing a cover of the Cole Porter song 'Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye'. Lennox's version would go on to be included on Leigh Blake's HIV fundraising project Red, Hot & Blue (1990). Jarman was to direct the music video but became too ill and Ed Lachlan completed the project. The video features extracts from Jarman's library of home movies projected onto Lennox and can be viewed here.