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Derek Jarman

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Michael Derek Elworthy Jarman<ref name="Tony Peake 1999 p. 13"/> (31 January 1942 – 19 February 1994) was an English artist, film maker, costume designer, stage designer, writer, poet, gardener, and gay rights activist.

BiographyEdit

Jarman was born at the Royal Victoria Nursing Home in Northwood, Middlesex, England,<ref name="Tony Peake 1999 p. 13"/> the son of Elizabeth Evelyn (née Puttock)<ref>Elizabeth Puttock's mother, Moselle, a daughter of Isaac Frederic Reuben, had Jewish ancestry. Tony Peake, Derek Jarman: A Biography (Woodstock: Overlook Press, 1999), p. 10.</ref> and Lancelot Elworthy Jarman.<ref>Peake, Derek Jarman: A Biography (1999), pp. 8–9.</ref><ref>Template:Cite ODNB</ref> His father was a Royal Air Force officer, born in New Zealand.

File:Derek Jarman 01.jpg
Jarman photographed in 1976 by former roommate and fellow artist Keith Milow
File:Derek Jarman 1942-1994 Film-maker, artist and gay rights activist lived and worked here.jpg
Blue plaque at Butler's Wharf

After a prep school education at Hordle House School, Jarman went on to board at Canford School in Dorset and from 1960 studied English and art at King's College London. This was followed by four years at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London (UCL), starting in 1963. From 1966-1969 he rented a two-room flat on the top floor of 60 Liverpool Road, London, sharing rooms during the last year with fellow artist Keith Milow. In August 1969, he moved to Upper Ground, opposite Blackfriars Bridge, the first of a series of warehouses on the river front. In his own words: "an exhilarating change after seven years in cramped Georgian terrace houses and basements [..] the warehouse allowed me to slip quietly away from the 'scene' which for five years had been the centre of my life – and had now exhausted itself – and establish my own idiosyncratic mode of living".<ref>Template:Cite book Derek Jarman, with Shaun Allen (ed.). Dancing Ledge. Minneapolis: Minn., 2010. Print.</ref> In the 1970s, he had a studio at Butler's Wharf. Jarman was outspoken about homosexuality, his public fight for gay rights, and his personal struggle with AIDS.

On 22 December 1986, Jarman was diagnosed as HIV positive and discussed his condition in public. His illness prompted him to move to Prospect Cottage, Dungeness, in Kent, near the nuclear power station. In 1994, he died of an AIDS-related illness in London,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> aged 52. He was an atheist.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> He is buried in the graveyard at St Clement's Church, Old Romney, Kent.

In his last years, Jarman was emotionally and practically supported by the companionship of Keith Collins (1963–2018), a young man whom he had met in 1987. While they were not lovers (Collins had his own partner), the friendship became essential for both of them. Jarman left Prospect Cottage to him.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

A blue plaque commemorating Jarman was unveiled at Butler's Wharf in London on 19 February 2019, the 25th anniversary of his death.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

FilmsEdit

Jarman's first films were experimental Super 8mm shorts, a form he never entirely abandoned, and later developed further in his films Imagining October (1984), The Angelic Conversation (1985), The Last of England (1987), and The Garden (1990) as a parallel to his narrative work. The Garden was entered into the 17th Moscow International Film Festival.<ref name="Moscow1991">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The Angelic Conversation featured Toby Mott and other members of the Grey Organisation, a radical artist collective.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Jarman first became known as a stage designer. His break in the film industry came as production designer for Ken Russell's The Devils (1971).<ref>Turning to Derek Jarman|Current|The Criterion Collection</ref> He made his mainstream narrative filmmaking debut with Sebastiane (1976), about the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian. This was one of the first British films to feature positive images of gay sexuality;<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> its dialogue was entirely in Latin.

He followed this with Jubilee (shot 1977, released 1978), in which Queen Elizabeth I of England is seen to be transported forward in time to a desolate and brutal wasteland ruled by her twentieth-century namesake.<ref>Jubilee (1978)|The Criterion Collection</ref> Jubilee has been described as "Britain's only decent punk film",<ref>Anarchy in the UK: Derek Jarman’s Jubilee (1978) Revisited, Julian Upton, Bright Lights Film Journal, Portland, OR, 1 October 2000.Retrieved: 1 January 2015.</ref> and featured punk groups and figures such as Jayne County of Wayne County & the Electric Chairs, Jordan, Toyah Willcox, Adam and the Ants and The Slits.

This was followed in 1979 by an adaptation of Shakespeare's The Tempest.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

During the 1980s, Jarman was a leading campaigner against Section 28, which sought to ban the "promotion" of homosexuality in schools. He also worked to raise awareness of AIDS. His artistic practice in the early 1980s reflected these commitments, especially in The Angelic Conversation (1985), a film in which the imagery is accompanied by Judi Dench's voice reciting Shakespeare's sonnets.

Jarman spent seven years making experimental Super 8mm films and attempting to raise money for Caravaggio (he later claimed to have rewritten the script seventeen times during this period). Released in 1986, Caravaggio<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> attracted a comparatively wide audience; it is still, barring the cult hit Jubilee, probably Jarman's most widely known work. This is partly due to the involvement, for the first time with a Jarman film, of the British television company Channel 4 in funding and distribution. Funded by the British Film Institute and produced by film theorist Colin MacCabe, Caravaggio became Jarman's most famous film to date, and marked the beginning of a new phase in his filmmaking career: from then onwards, all his films would be partly funded by television companies, often receiving their most prominent exhibition in TV screenings. Caravaggio also saw Jarman work with actress Tilda Swinton for the first time. Overt depictions of homosexual love, narrative ambiguity, and the live representations of Caravaggio's most famous paintings are all prominent features in the film.

The conclusion of Caravaggio also marked the beginning of a temporary abandonment of traditional narrative in Jarman's films. Frustrated by the formality of 35mm film production, and by the dependence on institutions and the resultant prolonged inactivity associated with it (which had already cost him seven years with Caravaggio, as well as derailing several long-term projects), Jarman returned to and expanded the super 8mm-based form he had previously worked in on Imagining October and The Angelic Conversation. Caravaggio was entered into the 36th Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the Silver Bear for an outstanding single achievement.<ref name="Berlinale">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

The first film to result from this new semi-narrative phase, The Last of England told the death of a country, ravaged by its own internal decay and the economic restructuring of Thatcher's government. "Wrenchingly beautiful … the film is one of the few commanding works of personal cinema in the late 80's – a call to open our eyes to a world violated by greed and repression, to see what irrevocable damage has been wrought on city, countryside and soul, how our skies, our bodies, have turned poisonous", wrote a Village Voice critic.

In 1989, Jarman's film War Requiem produced by Don Boyd brought Laurence Olivier out of retirement for what would be Olivier's last screen performance. The film uses Benjamin Britten's eponymous anti-war requiem as its soundtrack and juxtaposes violent footage of war with the mass for the dead and the passionate humanist poetry of Wilfred Owen.

During the making of his film The Garden, Jarman became seriously ill. Although he recovered sufficiently to complete the work, he never attempted anything on a comparable scale afterwards, returning to a more pared-down form for his concluding narrative films, Edward II (perhaps his most politically outspoken work, informed by his gay activism) and the Brechtian Wittgenstein, a delicate tragicomedy based on the life of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Jarman directed music videos for various artists, including Marianne Faithfull,<ref name=openculture>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The Smiths and the Pet Shop Boys.<ref name="Schneider">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

File:Derek Jarman's grave.jpg
Jarman's headstone in the graveyard of St Clement's Church, Old Romney

By the time of his 1993 film Blue,<ref name="bluetate">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Jarman was losing his sight and dying of AIDS-related complications. Blue consists of a single shot of saturated blue colour filling the screen, as background to a soundtrack composed by Simon Fisher Turner, and featuring original music by Coil and other artists, in which Jarman describes his life and vision. When it was shown on British television, Channel 4 carried the image whilst the soundtrack was broadcast simultaneously on BBC Radio 3.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Blue was unveiled at the 1993 Venice Biennale with Jarman in attendance and subsequently entered the collections of the Walker Art Institute;<ref>Blue|Walker Art Center</ref> Centre Georges Pompidou,<ref>Blue - Centre Pompidou</ref> MoMA<ref>Blue. 1993. Directed by Derek Jarman|MoMA</ref> and Tate.<ref name="bluetate"/> His final work as a film-maker was the film Glitterbug,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> made for the Arena slot on BBC Two, and broadcast shortly after Jarman's death.

Other worksEdit

File:Derek Jarman's garden.JPG
Jarman's garden, Prospect Cottage, Dungeness, in May 2007

Jarman's work broke new ground in creating and expanding the fledgling form of "the pop video" in England (eg. using his father's WWII archival footage (one of the first people to use a colour home movie camera which included the director as a toddler) on the early version of Wang Chung's "Dance Hall Days"), and in gay rights activism.<ref>Soundtrack Mix #28: Forever Blue: An Ode to Derek Jarman on Notebook|MUBI</ref>

Jarman also directed the 1989 tour by Pet Shop Boys. By pop concert standards, this was a highly theatrical event, with costume and specially shot films accompanying the individual songs. Jarman was the stage director of Sylvano Bussotti's opera L'Ispirazione, first staged in Florence in 1988.

Jarman is also remembered for his shingle cottage-garden at Prospect Cottage, created in the latter years of his life, in the shadow of Dungeness nuclear power station. The cottage is built in vernacular style in timber, with tar-based weatherproofing, like others nearby. Raised wooden text on the side of the cottage is the first stanza and the last five lines of the last stanza of John Donne's 1633 poem, The Sun Rising. The cottage garden was made by arranging flotsam washed up nearby, interspersed with endemic salt-loving beach plants, both set against the bright shingle. The garden has been the subject of several books. At this time, Jarman also began painting again.<ref>Evil Queen: The Last Paintings, 1994.</ref>

In 2020 the Garden Museum in London held an exhibition called "Derek Jarman: my Garden's Boundaries are the Horizon"<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> parts of the garden and Prospect Cottage were recreated for the exhibition as well as artifacts from Jarman's estate.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>

Jarman was the author of several books including his autobiography Dancing Ledge (1984), which details his life until the age 40. He provides his own insight on the history of gay life in London (1960s-1980s), discusses his own acceptance of his homosexuality at age 16 and accounts of the financial and emotional hardships of a life devoted to filmmaking.<ref>Jarman, Derek, and Shaun Allen. Dancing Ledge. Minneapolis: Minn., 2010. Print.</ref> A collection of poetry A Finger in the Fishes Mouth, two volumes of diaries Modern Nature and Smiling In Slow Motion and two treatises on his work in film and art The Last of England (also published as Kicking the Pricks) and Chroma.

Other notable published works include film scripts (Up in the Air, Blue, War Requiem, Caravaggio, Queer Edward II and Wittgenstein: The Terry Eagleton Script/The Derek Jarman Film), a study of his garden at Dungeness Derek Jarman's Garden, and At Your Own Risk, a defiant celebration of gay sexuality.

Musical tributesEdit

After his death, the band Chumbawamba released "Song for Derek Jarman" in his honour. Andi Sexgang released the CD Last of England as a Jarman tribute. The ambient experimental album The Garden Is Full of Metal by Robin Rimbaud included Jarman speech samples.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Manic Street Preachers' bassist Nicky Wire recorded a track titled "Derek Jarman's Garden" as a b-side to his single "Break My Heart Slowly" (2006). On his album In the Mist, released in 2011, ambient composer Harold Budd features a song titled "The Art of Mirrors (after Derek Jarman)".<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}Template:Cbignore</ref>

Coil, which in 1985 contributed a soundtrack for Jarman's The Angelic Conversation<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> released the 7" single "Themes for Derek Jarman's Blue"<ref>Template:Citation</ref> in 1993. In 2004, Coil's Peter Christopherson performed his score for the Jarman short The Art of Mirrors as a tribute to Jarman live at L'étrange Festival in Paris. In 2015, record label Black Mass Rising released a recording of the performance.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In 2018, composer Gregory Spears created a work for chorus and string quartet, titled "The Tower and the Garden", commissioned by conductors Donald Nally, Mark Shapiro, Robert Geary and Carmen-Helena Téllez, setting a poem by Keith Garebian from his collection "Blue: The Derek Jarman Poems" (2008).

The French musician and composer Romain Frequency released his first album Research on a nameless colour<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> in 2020 as a tribute to Jarman's final collection of Essays “Chroma” released in 1994, the year he died and written while struggling with illness (facing the irony of an artist going blind). The songs are devoted to an unexisting colour and their attendant emotion as a transposition of a certain contemplative state into sound. The album received a positive response from the press.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

At the time of his death, Jarman was slated to direct the Annie Lennox music video for "Every Time We Say Goodbye" from her Red Hot + Blue project (1990). As a tribute, the video features family film footage of Jarman's childhood.

FilmographyEdit

Feature filmsEdit

Short filmsEdit

  • Studio Bankside (1971)
  • Electric Fairy (1971)
  • A Journey to Avebury (1971)
  • Garden of Luxor (aka Burning the Pyramids 1972)
  • Burning the Pyramids (1972)
  • Miss Gaby (1972)
  • Andrew Logan Kisses the Glitterati (1972)
  • At Low Tide (1972)
  • Tarot (aka the Magician, 1972)
  • Art of Mirrors (1973)
  • Sulphur (1973)
  • Stolen Apples for Karen Blixen (1973)
  • Ashden's Walk on Møn (1973)
  • Miss World (1973)
  • The Devils at the Elgin (aka Reworking the Devils, 1974)
  • Fire Island (1974)
  • Duggie Fields (1974)
  • In the Shadow of the Sun (1974) (in 1981, Throbbing Gristle was commissioned to provide a new soundtrack for this 54-minute film)
  • Ulla's Fete (aka Ulla's Chandelier, 1975)
  • Picnic at Ray's (1975)
  • Sebastiane Wrap (1975)
  • The Making of Sebastiane (1975)
  • Sea of Storms (1976)
  • Sloane Square: A Room of One's Own (1976)
  • Gerald's Film (1976)
  • Art and the Pose (1976)
  • Houston Texas (1976)
  • Jordan's Dance (1977)
  • Every Woman for Herself and All for Art (1977)
  • The Pantheon (1978)
  • T.G.: Psychic Rally in Heaven (1981)
  • Jordan's Wedding (1981)
  • Waiting for Waiting for Godot (1982)
  • Pontormo and Punks at Santa Croce (1982)
  • B2 Tape (1983)
  • The Dream Machine (1983) (Consists of multiple short vignettes of previous works)
    • Witches Song (1979)
    • Broken English (1979)
    • Ballad Of Lucy Jordan (1979)
    • Pirate Tape (1983)
    • T.G.: Psychic Rally In Heaven (1981).
  • Imagining October (1984)
  • Pirate Tape (William S. Burroughs Film) (1987)
  • Aria (1987)
    • segment: Depuis le Jour
  • L'Ispirazione (1988)
  • Coil: Egyptian Basses (1993)
  • The Clearing (1994)<ref>Template:Citation</ref>
  • Glitterbug (1994) (one-hour compilation film of various Super-8 shorts with music by Brian Eno)
  • Will You Dance With Me? (2014) (filmed in 1984 but released posthumously)<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Jarman's early Super-8 mm work has been included on some of the DVD releases of his films.


Music videosEdit

  • The Sex Pistols: The Sex Pistols Number One (1977)<ref name="autogenerated1">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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  • Psychic TV Jordi Valls: "Catalan" (1984)<ref name="autogenerated1"/>
  • Language: "Touch The Radio Dance" (1984)<ref>Peake, Tony (1999). Derek Jarman: A Biography. New York: The Overlook Press/Little, Brown. p. 312: listed as "Steve Hale's 'Touch the Radio, Dance!'"</ref> (shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City)
  • Wide Boy Awake Billy Hyena (1984)
  • Orange Juice: "What Presence?!" (1984)<ref name="autogenerated1"/>
  • Marc Almond: "Tenderness Is a Weakness" (1984)<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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  • Bryan Ferry: "Windswept" (1985)<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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    • The "Panic" sequence from The Queen Is Dead was edited to form the video for that single (1986)
    • "Ask" (1986)<ref name="Schneider"/><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

  • Easterhouse: "1969" and "Whistling in the Dark" (1986)<ref name="johncoulthart1"/>
  • Matt Fretton: "Avatar" (unreleased) (1986)<ref name="autogenerated1"/>
  • The Mighty Lemon Drops "Out of Hand" (1987)<ref name="autogenerated1"/>
  • Bob Geldof: "I Cry Too" and "In The Pouring Rain" (1987)<ref name="autogenerated1"/>
  • Pet Shop Boys: "It's a Sin" (1987),<ref name="Schneider"/> "Rent" (1987),<ref name="Schneider"/> several concert projections (released as Projections in 1993),<ref name="autogenerated1"/> and "Violence" (1995)<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

  • Patti Smith: "Memorial Tribute" (1993)<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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Scenic designEdit

BibliographyEdit

  • Dancing Ledge (1984)
  • Kicking the Pricks (1987)
  • Modern Nature: Journals, 1989–1990 (1991)
  • At Your Own Risk (1992)
  • Chroma (1993)
  • A Finger in the Fishes Mouth, poetry (1972; 2014; 2024)
  • Derek Jarman's Garden (1995)
  • Smiling in Slow Motion: Journals, 1991–1994 (2000)
  • Through The Billboard Promised Land Without Ever Stopping (2022)

In pop cultureEdit

|CitationClass=web }}</ref> Jarman's surviving muse Keith Collins and Siouxsie and the Banshees founder Steven Severin both participated in the making of the film, which had its world premiere at the 2009 Reykjavik International Film Festival in Iceland, its UK premiere at the Raindance Film Festival in London, and its California premiere at the 2010 Frameline International Film Festival in San Francisco. In 2011, the film was installed permanently in the British Film Institute's National Film Archive in London.

  • The Gospel According to St Derek (Andy Kimpton-Nye/400Blows Productions, 2014): screened at the King's College Early Modern Exhibition, the Pacific Film Archive - Berkeley Art Museum, the Australian cinematheque and on the Guardian## website, this 40 mins documentary bears witness to Derek Jarman’s unique approach to low-budget film-making and his near-alchemical ability to turn the base components of film-making in to artistic gold.
  • Saintmaking: Derek Jarman and the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (2021): a documentary by Marco Alessi, commissioned by The Guardian to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Jarman's canonisation into the first British living gay saint by the group of queer activist nuns, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
  • Blue Now (2023): a live performance adaptation of Jarman's film Blue, with direction by Neil Bartlett and music by Simon Fisher-Turner, who scored the original film as well. The show has toured around the UK.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

See alsoEdit

ReferencesEdit

Template:Reflist

Further readingEdit

  • Robert Mills, Derek Jarman's Medieval Modern (D.S. Brewer, 2018), Template:ISBN
  • Niall Richardson, 'The Queer Cinema of Derek Jarman: Critical and Cultural Readings' (I.B. Tauris, 2009)
  • Michael Charlesworth, Derek Jarman (Reaktion, 2011)
  • Martin Frey. Derek Jarman – Moving Pictures of a Painter (INGRAM Content Group Inc., 2016), Template:ISBN
  • Steven Dillon. Derek Jarman and Lyric Film: The Mirror and the Sea. (2004).
  • Tony Peake. Derek Jarman (Little, Brown & Co, 2000). 600-page biography.
  • Michael O'Pray. Derek Jarman: Dreams of England (British Film Institute, 1996).
  • Howard Sooley. Derek Jarman's Garden (Thames & Hudson, 1995).
  • Derek Jarman. Modern Nature (Diaries 1989–1990)
  • Derek Jarman. Smiling in Slow Motion (Diaries 1991–1994)
  • Derek Jarman. Dancing Ledge (memoir. Template:ISBN)
  • Evil Queen exhibition catalogue. Foreword by Mark Jordan Template:ISBN
  • Derek Jarman. At Your Own Risk (memoir, Thames & Hudson, 1991) Template:ISBN
  • Judith Noble. "The Wedding of Light and Matter: Alchemy and Magic in the Films of Derek Jarman". In Visions of Enchantment: Occultism, Magic, and Visual Culture, eds. Daniel Zamani, Judith Noble, and Merlin Cox (London: Fulgur Press, 2019), pp. 168–181.

External linksEdit

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