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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Derek Jarman, Visionary

7/5/14 to 8/28/14

Derek Jarman (1942–1994) was one of the most creative, idiosyncratic, and controversial filmmakers to come out of Britain. A deeply independent filmmaker, he embraced low budget filmmaking for its aesthetics and ethics, welcoming the opportunity to innovate and work with friends, but also to resist the way films were traditionally conceived and made, and thus willingly unsettle audiences. Jarman was openly gay and his films often foregrounded repressed gay history, at times boldly linking it to contemporary queer issues. His best-known films are fascinating, irreverent explorations of gay figures-Caravaggio, Edward II, Wittgenstein- using either stunning minimalist sets or lush tableaux to testify to their complex lives. Jarman also created looser, stream-of-conscious films, such as The Last of England, War Requiem, and The Garden, dreamlike, often wordless, constructions. In them, one can sense Jarman reflecting on his own mortality after he was diagnosed with HIV. With The Tempest and Edward II, he loosely adapted Elizabethan plays, but contemporary culture also inspired him, including the 1970s British punk movement as seen in Jubilee. One can trace Jarman's concerns through his films: the social realities of Thatcher's England, sexual politics and the AIDS crisis, religion and spirituality, gardening. “I've always felt that the cinema needed more autobiography,” Jarman once noted. His last film, his most direct musing on his life, is the unforgettable Blue.

Jarman was originally a painter-as is evident in a number of his films-and when he turned to filmmaking he was open to all formats. He regularly filmed in Super 8, using it as a kind of notetaking, and then incorporating the footage into his feature films but he also made short Super 8 films (which are in the process of being restored). Jarman designed sets for the opera and ballet and eventually for filmmaker Ken Russell. He went on to collaborate with a host of actors, artists, writers, musicians, and activists, notably muse Tilda Swinton, and was an influence on a generation of artists and filmmakers such as Isaac Julien, whose Derek pays tribute to him. We are pleased to screen a selection of Jarman's remarkable films, newly remastered by the BFI National Archive to mark the twentieth anniversary of his death.

Our series opens with a special screening of Edward II at Frameline38: San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival on Friday, June 20 at 11 a.m. at the Castro Theatre; for details go to frameline.org.

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Copresented by Frameline, with thanks to Desiree Buford. We are grateful to the BFI, in particular Charlie Bligh, Christine Whitehouse, and George Watson, and acknowledge the inspiration of BFI's Queer Pagan Punk: Derek Jarman. Our gratitude to James Mackay for his invaluable support.