About

On the 23 December, 1980 Derek Jarman filmed English band and art collective Throbbing Gristle (Genesis P-Orridge, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Peter Christopherson and Chris Carter) at the London gay disco Heaven. P-Orridge wrote that the evening was "the first time we've ever had hell in heaven." Jarman's Super-8 footage was then refilmed to the point of abstraction and superimposed with black and white images from Francesco Bertolini's 1911 film adaptation of Dante'sInferno. The soundtrack features three tracks from the Throbbing Gristle album 2nd Annual Report1977, most notably a live recording of 'Slug Bait' from a concert in Brighton that begins with an unsettling police recording of a murderer's confession. The film was first presented alongside Jarman's montage filmIn The Shadow of the Sun at the 1981 Berlin Film Festival. When it screened at the Melbourne International Film Festival Jarman noted "the festival audience hated it one and all, and shouted while the film was being shown."