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Derek Jarman
Startling and subversive works from an inspirational figure in British cinema.
For those that hunger for something distinctive and different, the eclectic work of Derek Jarman is inspirational in its fearlessness yet remains touchingly personal.
Emerging from the Slade School of Art to become a renowned set designer in the early 1970s, he directed a series of radical features throughout the 80s and 90s that would define a new oppositional and iconoclastic British cinema.
Jarman was a rooted post-modernist: attached to history yet willing to subvert it. He manipulated time into startling new loops and sequences – colliding past and present, tradition with transgression, challenging accepted orthodoxy. His films were like magic spells, rooted in landscape, visually charged and offering a view of history as a
place which could still inform the present, playing with notions of time.
We present a selection of his works including his renowned features Sebastiane (1976) and Caravaggio (1986) – both classics of gay British cinema – though to his vehement late critiques of Thatcher's Britain, The Last of England (1987) and The Garden (1990).
CaravaggioCaravaggio
Biopic198693 minsDirector: Derek Jarman
Derek Jarman’s unique biopic of the 17th century Italian artist Michelangelo da Caravaggio is a powerful meditation on sexuality, criminality and art.
SebastianeSebastiane
Animation & Artists Moving Image197685 minsDirector: Derek Jarman and Paul Humfress
A distinctly bold and sensual reclaiming of gay history, Jarman here tells the sexually intense story of the 4th-century martyr.
War RequiemWar Requiem
War198993 minsDirector: Derek Jarman
Derek Jarman's affecting vision of the horrors young men faced during the First World War.
WittgensteinWittgenstein
Biopic199372 minsDirector: Derek Jarman
Written for Channel 4 by radical literary theorist Terry Eagleton and directed by Derek Jarman, Wittgenstein is a bold, offbeat biography, exploring the politics and sexuality of the great, troubled philosopher.
The GardenThe Garden
Animation & Artists Moving Image199192 minsDirector: Derek Jarman
Inside his modest, sparsely-furnished home on the barren, windswept Dungeness coastline, Derek Jarman dreams.
The Last of EnglandThe Last of England
Animation & Artists Moving Image198791 minsDirector: Derek Jarman
Derek Jarman's passionate and poetic lament on the rise of Thatcherism and corporate dealings.
JubileeJubilee
Drama1978106 minsDirector: Derek Jarman
The mythological past and a soon-to-be bleak future converge on the sparse, grey streets of London in Jarman’s personal vision of the punk movement.
The Angelic ConversationThe Angelic Conversation
Animation & Artists Moving Image198581 minsDirector: Derek Jarman
The Angelic Conversation sees Derek Jarman conjure an evocative and radical visualisation of Shakespeare’s love poems. With narration by Judi Dench and music by Coil.
The TempestThe Tempest
Drama198096 minsDirector: Derek Jarman
Derek Jarman’s brooding and darkly symbolic third feature is considered by some to be the most evocative Shakespeare adaptation ever to reach the screen.