Derek Jarman

Michael Derek Elworthy Jarman (31 January 1942 – 19 February 1994) was an English film director, stage designer, diarist, artist, gardener, and author.
Life.
Jarman was born at the Royal Victoria Nursing Home in Northwood, Middlesex, England. The son of Elizabeth Evelyn ("née" Puttock) and Lancelot Elworthy Jarman. His father was a Royal Air Force officer, born in New Zealand. 
After a prep school education at Hordle House School, Jarman went on to board at Canford School in Dorset and from 1960 studied 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. He had a studio at Butler's Wharf, London, in the 1970s. 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, aged 52. He was an atheist. He is buried in the graveyard at St Clement's Church, Old Romney, Kent. 
A blue plaque commemorating Jarman was unveiled at Butler's Wharf in London on 19 February 2019, the 25th anniversary of his death.
Films.
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. "The Angelic Conversation" featured Toby Mott and other members of the Grey Organisation, a radical artist collective.
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). 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; 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. "Jubilee" has been described as "Britain's only decent punk film", and featured punk groups and figures such as Wayne County of Wayne County & the Electric Chairs, Jordan, Toyah Willcox, and Adam and the Ants.
This was followed in 1979 by an adaptation of Shakespeare's "The Tempest".
During the 1980s, Jarman was a leading campaigner against Clause 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" 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.
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" 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 queer activism) and the Brechtian "Wittgenstein", a delicate tragicomedy based on the life of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Jarman made a side income by directing music videos for various artists, including Marianne Faithfull, the Smiths and the Pet Shop Boys.
By the time of his 1993 film "Blue", 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. "Blue" was unveiled at the 1993 Venice Biennale with Jarman in attendance and subsequently entered the collections of the Walker Art Institute; Centre Georges Pompidou; MoMA and Tate. His final work as a film-maker was the film "Glitterbug", made for the "Arena" slot on BBC Two, and broadcast shortly after Jarman's death.
Other works.
Jarman's work broke new ground in creating and expanding the fledgling form of 'the pop video' in England, and in gay rights activism. Several volumes of his diaries have been published.
Jarman also directed the 1989 tour by the UK duo [[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 "[[Sylvano Bussotti|L'Ispirazione]]", first staged in Florence in 1988.
Jarman is also remembered for his famous 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 poem, "The Sun Rising". The cottage garden was made by arranging [[flotsam]] washed up nearby, interspersed with [[Endemism|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.
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 (60's-80's), discusses his own acceptance of his homosexuality at age 16 and accounts of the financial and emotional hardships of a life devoted to filmmaking. 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 tributes.
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. 
The [[Manic Street Preachers]]' bassist [[Nicky Wire]] recorded a track titled "Derek Jarman's Garden" as a [[A-side and B-side|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)".
[[Coil (band)|Coil]], which in 1985 contributed a soundtrack for Jarman's "[[The Angelic Conversation (album)|The Angelic Conversation]]" released the 7" single "Themes for Derek Jarman's Blue" 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. 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" 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.
Filmography.
Short films.
Jarman's early Super-8 mm work has been included on some of the DVD releases of his films.
External links.
[[Category:Alumni of the Slade School of Fine Art]]
[[Category:English film directors]]
[[Category:BAFTA Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema Award]]
[[Category:English diarists]]
[[Category:English atheists]]
[[Category:English experimental filmmakers]]
[[Category:British experimental filmmakers]]
[[Category:LGBT rights activists from England]]
[[Category:Alumni of King's College London]]
[[Category:People educated at Canford School]]
[[Category:People from Northwood, London]]
[[Category:British people of Jewish descent]]
[[Category: Gay artists]]
[[Category: English artists]]
[[Category:Gay writers]]
[[Category:LGBT directors]]
[[Category:LGBT writers from England]]
[[Category:1942 births]]
[[Category:1994 deaths]]
[[Category:AIDS-related deaths in England]]
[[Category:English gardeners]]
[[Category:People educated at Walhampton School and Hordle House School]]