Derek Jarman, Visionary

7/5/14 to 8/28/14

To mark the twentieth anniversary of Derek Jarman's death, we are pleased to screen a selection of his remarkable films, newly remastered by the BFI. Jarman (1942–1994), one of the most creative, idiosyncratic, and controversial filmmakers to come out of Britain, was known for his embrace of low-budget filmmaking, his willingness to unsettle audiences, and his vibrant exploration of a repressed queer history. And don't miss a screening of Andy Kimpton Nye's portrait of Jarman preceding a screening of Jarman's transcendent Blue on August 28.

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Past Films

  • Sebastiane

    Saturday, July 5 8:20pm
    Derek Jarman, Paul Humfress (U.K., 1976) New Digital Restoration! Jarman's first feature caused riots at the 1977 Locarno Festival. Set on the sunny, sandy coastline of Sardinia, it is a homoerotic rendering of the legend of St. Sebastian-in Latin, with English subtitles. (82 mins)
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  • Jubilee

    Saturday, July 12 8:30 pm
    Derek Jarman (U.K., 1978) New Digital Restoration! A classic from the British punk era, with music by Wayne County and Adam Ant. It's 1578 and Queen Elizabeth I and her court astrologer travel into the future to a postapocalyptic wasteland populated by outlaw girl gangs. (103 mins)
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  • Caravaggio

    Saturday, July 19 8:30 pm
    Derek Jarman (U.K., 1986) New Digital Restoration!Caravaggio (is) admirably straightforward, but elusive and dreamy nonetheless. Set in a milieu of gamblers and prostitutes, the film evokes the fantasies of rough trade to which the artist supposedly subscribes and then transcends” (J. Hoberman). (93 mins)
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  • The Last of England

    Saturday, July 26 8:40 pm
    Derek Jarman (U.K., 1987) Archival Print! Jarman's apocalypse-now vision of Thatcher's England is an anti–city symphony whose lyricism is put toward a portrait of the damage done. An astounding collage of urban images is edited to flow with dramatic passages-reenactments from hell-and idyllic family footage from before the fall. Tilda Swinton stars. (87 mins)
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  • War Requiem

    Sunday, July 27 7:10 pm
    Derek Jarman (U.K., 1988). Jarman's nonnarrative lament to the tragedy of war combines poetry recitations (Wilfred Owen's “Strange Meeting”) and Benjamin Britten's oratorio “War Requiem” with archival footage and appearances by Tilda Swinton and Sir Laurence Olivier, in his screen farewell. (92 mins)
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  • Edward II

    Friday, August 1 8:40 pm
    Derek Jarman (U.K., 1991). New Digital Restoration! Jarman's bold version of Christopher Marlowe's four-hundred-year-old play streamlines the plot to the doomed King Edward II and his beloved Piers Gaveston, enthralled in an obsessive love affair condemned by nobles and church, and his despairing queen, Isabella (Tilda Swinton). (90 mins)
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  • The Garden

    Sunday, August 3 7:30 pm
    Derek Jarman (U.K., 1990). BAM/ PFA Collection Print! Jarman the gardener is a dreamer . . . His starting points are his own failing body, his home, and his garden. From these, his inner self conjures the dreams that fill the film. “The Garden is as mystifying as it is intense” (Janet Maslin). (92 mins)
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  • Wittgenstein

    Friday, August 8 7pm
    Derek Jarman (U.K., 1993). New Digital Restoration! One of the few films to have a philosopher as its main character, Jarman's imaginative and irreverent portrait of Wittgenstein is “playful, witty, and moving (and) one of Jarman's most accessible works” (Vancouver Film Festival). (75 mins)
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  • The Tempest

    Saturday, August 16 8:35pm
    Derek Jarman (U.K., 1979) New Digital Restoration! Brooding and darkly laden with heavily symbolic imagery, Jarman's terrific third feature is considered by many to be the most evocative Shakespeare adaptation ever to reach the screen. “Electrifying” (Film Journal). (95 mins)
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  • Blue

    Thursday, August 28 7 pm
    Derek Jarman (U.K., 1993). One of the most intense and personal cinematic experiences ever made, a philosophical rumination on illness, death, life, and most of all, transcendence. With Andy Kipton Nye's short portrait, The Gospel According to St. Derek. (112 mins)
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