Derek Jarman
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Biography
Filmography
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Bibliography
Biography
Leading avant-garde British filmmaker whose visually opulent and stylistically adventurous body of work stands in defiant opposition to the established literary and theatrical traditions of his sometimes staid national cinema. With influences ranging from the eccentric writing-directing team Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger to seminal gay aesthetes Jean Cocteau and Kenneth Anger, Jarman advocated a personal cinema more dedicated to striking imagery and evocative sounds than to the imperatives of narrative and characterization. His comments on one of his strongest films are revealing: "'The Last of England' works with image and sound, a language which is nearer to poetry than prose. It tells its story quite happily in silent images, in contrast to a word bound cinema."
Like the noted American underground filmmaker Anger, Jarman displayed a fascination with violence, homoeroticism, gay representation, and mythopoeic imagery. Proudly and openly gay, Jarman shared news of his HIV-infection with his public and incorporated his subsequent battles with AIDS into his work, particularly in "The Garden" (1990) and "Blue" (1993). Excavating and reclaiming suppressed gay history was an ongoing project that informed his several unconventional biopics: "Sebastiane" (1975), Jarman's sun-drenched directorial debut about the martyred Christian saint; the unusually accessible and slyly anachronistic "Caravaggio" (1986), the raw and angry modern dress version of Christopher Marlowe's "Edward II" (1991), and the stark and theatrical "Wittgenstein" (1993).
Trained in the fine arts, Jarman began as (and remained) a designer of sets and costumes for ballet and opera. He made his first films (super-8 shorts) while working as a set designer on Ken Russell's "The Devils" (1971) and "Savage Messiah" (1972). He continued to paint and exhibit his work at London galleries while making his own films which also reflected a painterly concern with composition. Jarman's features, shorts and music videos display an artist's lively interest in contemporary and historical English culture. In "Jubilee" (1978), Queen Elizabeth I is conducted on a tour of a futuristic England in which violence and anarchy hold sway; the film became something of a beacon of the punk movement of the late 1970s. Jarman's take on "The Tempest" (1979) was a typically irreverent and somewhat rambling reworking of Shakespeare's play. The WWI poems of Wilfred Owen, set to the music of Benjamin Britten, shaped "War Requiem" (1988), a powerful essay on the wastes of wars past while commenting on the modern ravages of AIDS.
Jarman's feature about the painter Caravaggio was perhaps his most popular film. This stylishly rendered biopic dramatized the conflicts between the artist's need for patronage, his religious beliefs and his sexuality. Observing that Caravaggio consistently painted St. John as muscle-bound, Jarman suggested that the painter found sexual as well as aesthetic elation with the street thug he used as a model. The director also had fun creating filmic facsimiles of some of the painter's best known works. Curiously, though it undercuts narrative conventions by using anachronisms--typewriters, motorbikes--the film reiterated one of the hoariest cliches of Hollywood biopics like "Lust for Life": i.e. that art is little more than immediately recorded experience, "life" thrown directly onto the canvas; the "process" of artistic creation is surprisingly glossed over.
Like the celebrated American underground filmmaker Stan Brakhage, Jarman was a compulsive film diarist. He chronicled much of his life on super-8 film and incorporated this footage, blown up to 35mm, into his more personal, non-linear narrative films. Jarman's super-8 movies of beautiful young men in dramatic landscapes featuring caves, rocks, and water lent a lushly romantic mood to "The Angelic Conversation" (1985), a non-traditional rendering of Shakespeare's sonnets. "The Last of England," a raging, despairing, and emotionally overwhelming vision of Britain as an urban wasteland, intercut shots of Jarman writing in his room with excerpts from home movies shot by the director, his father, and grandfather and surreal tableaux of violence and degradation. Pastoral sequences of Jarman's childhood evince a longing for simpler times for the filmmaker and the nation. Jarman described himself as one of the last generation to remember the "countryside before mechanization intervened and destroyed everything."
Though much of Jarman's work is intensely personal, it was also supremely collaborative. He worked with many of the same people--in front of and behind the camera--on each of his projects. He welcomed and encouraged contributions; significant Liverpool sequences in "The Last of England" were shot by members of Jarman's crew without his direction. Composer-sound designer Simon Fisher Turner provided powerful scores and/or densely layered soundtracks for "Caravaggio," "The Last of England," "The Garden," "Edward II" and "Blue." Distinguished actor Nigel Terry starred as the tortured Caravaggio and his rich deep voice narrated "The Last of England" and parts of "Blue." Jarman's most important performer was the prodigiously talented Tilda Swinton, whose intensity and unusual beauty graced "The Last of England," "War Requiem," "The Garden," "Edward II," "Wittgenstein," "Blue" and Jarman's segment of "Aria" (1987).
In his last years, Jarman was an outspoken advocate for the rights and dignity of gays and PWAs (Persons with AIDS) but art remained his primary cause. A champion of film art and a dedicated experimentalist, he was a critic of, and at odds with, what he saw as the stifling, repressive commercialism of mainstream cinema. Always struggling for funds, Jarman's first seven features were produced for a combined cost of only $3 million. His final film, "Blue," was his most unconventional--an unchanging field of blue over which we hear voices and sounds. Blind and mortally ill, Jarman remained a visionary film maverick. He authored a number a books including a 1984 autobiography, "Dancing Ledge." Jarman succumbed to AIDS complications at age 52.
Filmography
Director (Feature Film)
Cast (Feature Film)
Cinematography (Feature Film)
Writer (Feature Film)
Editing (Feature Film)
Misc. Crew (Feature Film)
Life Events
1968
Worked on costume and set design for the Coliseum production of the opera "Don Giovanni"
1971
Set designer on Ken Russell's "The Devils"
1972
Returned to work for the Royal Ballet
1972
Set designer on Ken Russell's "Savage Messiah"
1976
Made feature directorial debut, "Sebastian"
1976
Exhibited in a show of Six British Painters in Houston, Texas
1979
Directed Super-8mm short, "Broken English", a performance film of Marianne Faithful
1984
Honored with a retrospective of his paintings at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London
1984
Visited the Soviet Union: returned and made a short film about the experience entitled "Imagining October"
1984
Published his first book, the autobiographical "Dancing Ledge"
1986
Diagnosed as HIV-positive; began keeping a journal
1988
Directed Lawrence Olivier in his final performance, "War Requiem"
1989
Directed the stage show of The Pet Shop Boys World Tour
Videos
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