The easy freedom of this medium allowed the artist to range over subjects as diverse as tarot, male nudes at Fire Island and a friend’s flat – and offer clues to his more public feature films
Thirty years after his death in February 1994, it is perhaps unexpected that Derek Jarman – multi-faceted artist, activist, film-maker, socialiser – is probably now most widely known as a gardener. The patch of beautifully arranged salt-resistant vegetation he built around a windswept clapboard cottage in Dungeness, in the shadow of the now non-functioning nuclear power station, is the subject of books, exhibitions, and many a magazine picture spread. A number of high-profile keepers of the flame regularly bang the drum – Tilda Swinton, Isaac Julien and Neil Bartlett among them – ensuring the Jarman legend is not likely to slip away any time soon.
The latest move in this perpetuation process takes place with a programme of Jarman...
Thirty years after his death in February 1994, it is perhaps unexpected that Derek Jarman – multi-faceted artist, activist, film-maker, socialiser – is probably now most widely known as a gardener. The patch of beautifully arranged salt-resistant vegetation he built around a windswept clapboard cottage in Dungeness, in the shadow of the now non-functioning nuclear power station, is the subject of books, exhibitions, and many a magazine picture spread. A number of high-profile keepers of the flame regularly bang the drum – Tilda Swinton, Isaac Julien and Neil Bartlett among them – ensuring the Jarman legend is not likely to slip away any time soon.
The latest move in this perpetuation process takes place with a programme of Jarman...
- 5/7/2024
- by Andrew Pulver
- The Guardian - Film News
It’s 30 years this week since the death of the celebrated arthouse auteur. Across historical romps, dystopian nightmares and homoerotic poetry, we rate Jarman’s finest full-length films
Judi Dench reads 14 Shakespeare sonnets over 77 minutes of homoerotic imagery, backed by compositions by Benjamin Britten and experimental band Coil in this romantic and dreamy film. While not as powerful as Jarman’s best queer works, which channelled anger as well as beauty in their rebellion against oppression, Dench’s readings and the woozy imagery work beautifully together.
Judi Dench reads 14 Shakespeare sonnets over 77 minutes of homoerotic imagery, backed by compositions by Benjamin Britten and experimental band Coil in this romantic and dreamy film. While not as powerful as Jarman’s best queer works, which channelled anger as well as beauty in their rebellion against oppression, Dench’s readings and the woozy imagery work beautifully together.
- 2/22/2024
- by Alex Davidson
- The Guardian - Film News
Tilda Swinton famously cut her acting teeth on the experimental films of late director Derek Jarman such as Caravaggio and The Garden as well as life-long friend Joanna Hogg’s debut short Caprice and Sally Potter’s Orlando.
Nearly 50 years later, she has continued to work with Hogg as well as in the experimental cinema arena, finding a new Jarman-esque kindred spirit in Thai artist and filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
Speaking in an in-conversation event at the Marrakech Film Festival on Monday, the actress revealed how some of the big commercial studio pictures she has worked on across her career have felt personally more experimental to her than her avant-garde work.
“I’ve been really fortunate to have some adventures in worlds of filmmaking that I never thought I would be able to go into,” she said.
“When Derek died [in 1994], I was a bit high and dry… slowly… invitations came...
Nearly 50 years later, she has continued to work with Hogg as well as in the experimental cinema arena, finding a new Jarman-esque kindred spirit in Thai artist and filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
Speaking in an in-conversation event at the Marrakech Film Festival on Monday, the actress revealed how some of the big commercial studio pictures she has worked on across her career have felt personally more experimental to her than her avant-garde work.
“I’ve been really fortunate to have some adventures in worlds of filmmaking that I never thought I would be able to go into,” she said.
“When Derek died [in 1994], I was a bit high and dry… slowly… invitations came...
- 11/27/2023
- by Melanie Goodfellow
- Deadline Film + TV
John Tilley, a longtime distribution exec and advocate for independent film at companies including United Artists Classics, Cinevista and Strand, who was instrumental in introducing the films of Pedro Almodovar to U.S. audiences, died Sunday in New York City. He was 75.
“John was always a consummate encyclopedia of knowledge of the industry, and his pool of friends and colleagues from around the globe always created a sense of family in Cannes, Berlin and more. His work at Strand Releasing was invaluable,” said Marcus Hu, co-president of Strand Releasing.
Filmmaker Ira Sachs said, “John was one of the first people I met in the film business, and he remained one of the kindest. He was open, curious, passionate, opinionated, and wise, and he knew the history of American and queer independent cinema like few others. His loss represents the passing of a generation of pioneers that created the community and industry that we know today.
“John was always a consummate encyclopedia of knowledge of the industry, and his pool of friends and colleagues from around the globe always created a sense of family in Cannes, Berlin and more. His work at Strand Releasing was invaluable,” said Marcus Hu, co-president of Strand Releasing.
Filmmaker Ira Sachs said, “John was one of the first people I met in the film business, and he remained one of the kindest. He was open, curious, passionate, opinionated, and wise, and he knew the history of American and queer independent cinema like few others. His loss represents the passing of a generation of pioneers that created the community and industry that we know today.
- 10/11/2023
- by Pat Saperstein
- Variety Film + TV
Mubi has announced its lineup of streaming offerings for next month, including the exclusive streaming premiere of Albert Serra’s extraordinary Pacifiction, a trio of films by Todd Haynes, two by Michael Haneke (Caché and Amour), plus works by David Cronenberg, Shin’ya Tsukamoto, and Derek Jarman.
Additional selections include Alice Rohrwacher’s Corpo Celeste, Luchino Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers, Sean Baker’s early film Starlet, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s short Mekong Hotel.
Check out the lineup below and get 30 days free here.
June 1 – Is This Fate?, directed by Helga Reidemeister | What Sets Us Free? German Feminist Cinema
June 2 – Safe, directed by Todd Haynes | I Really Love You: Three by Todd Hayne
June 3 – Caché, directed by Michael Haneke | Close-Up on Michael Haneke
June 4 – Amour, directed by Michael Haneke | Close-Up on Michael Haneke
June 5 – Topology of Sirens, directed by Jonathan Davies
June 6 – Tetsuo, the Iron Man, directed by Shin’ya...
Additional selections include Alice Rohrwacher’s Corpo Celeste, Luchino Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers, Sean Baker’s early film Starlet, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s short Mekong Hotel.
Check out the lineup below and get 30 days free here.
June 1 – Is This Fate?, directed by Helga Reidemeister | What Sets Us Free? German Feminist Cinema
June 2 – Safe, directed by Todd Haynes | I Really Love You: Three by Todd Hayne
June 3 – Caché, directed by Michael Haneke | Close-Up on Michael Haneke
June 4 – Amour, directed by Michael Haneke | Close-Up on Michael Haneke
June 5 – Topology of Sirens, directed by Jonathan Davies
June 6 – Tetsuo, the Iron Man, directed by Shin’ya...
- 5/23/2023
- by Leonard Pearce
- The Film Stage
Russell Tovey, Simon Fisher Turner, Travis Alabanza and Neil Bartlett are teaming up to reimagine the director’s final film – a narrated meditation over a static blue screen – as a ‘thank you’ to the LGBTQ+ hero
Neil Bartlett vividly remembers his first glimpse of Derek Jarman’s work: covertly watching the film Sebastiane. “How I managed to do that without my mum and dad finding out,” he marvels. “I was captivated. That’s when Derek became public property – Mary Whitehouse and her cohorts were frothing at the mouth. And my young man’s cultural gaydar went: ‘Oh, what’s this?’”
As a painter, writer and film-maker, Jarman was a unique figure in British culture: an icon of the Thatcher years who defied all they stood for. He never hid his sexuality, and nor did he hide his Aids diagnosis, despite the snarling hatred shown towards people living with the disease.
Neil Bartlett vividly remembers his first glimpse of Derek Jarman’s work: covertly watching the film Sebastiane. “How I managed to do that without my mum and dad finding out,” he marvels. “I was captivated. That’s when Derek became public property – Mary Whitehouse and her cohorts were frothing at the mouth. And my young man’s cultural gaydar went: ‘Oh, what’s this?’”
As a painter, writer and film-maker, Jarman was a unique figure in British culture: an icon of the Thatcher years who defied all they stood for. He never hid his sexuality, and nor did he hide his Aids diagnosis, despite the snarling hatred shown towards people living with the disease.
- 5/2/2023
- by David Jays
- The Guardian - Film News
[Editor’s note: This interview contains spoilers about the plot of “The Eternal Daughter.”]
Tilda Swinton’s career has taken some unexpected turns in the decades since she was Derek Jarman’s experimental partner-in-crime. After her acclaimed turn in Jarman’s “Edward II,” Swinton’s gender-bending performance as an Elizabethan nobleman in Sally Potter’s “Orlando” solidified her capacity for audacious onscreen transformations. It wasn’t until 15 years later, with her Oscar-winning turn in Tony Gilroy’s “Michael Clayton,” that Swinton began to explore more commercial material.
These days, however, she has doubled down on the more singular undertakings that put her on the map, from Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s meditative “Memoria” to “The Eternal Daughter,” her latest collaboration with longtime friend and colleague Joanna Hogg.
“The Eternal Daughter,” which A24 released theatrically last week, merges Swinton’s performative ambition with a quasi-genre twist. She plays both Julie, a middle-aged filmmaker, and her mother Rosalind as the pair journey to a gothic country estate.
Tilda Swinton’s career has taken some unexpected turns in the decades since she was Derek Jarman’s experimental partner-in-crime. After her acclaimed turn in Jarman’s “Edward II,” Swinton’s gender-bending performance as an Elizabethan nobleman in Sally Potter’s “Orlando” solidified her capacity for audacious onscreen transformations. It wasn’t until 15 years later, with her Oscar-winning turn in Tony Gilroy’s “Michael Clayton,” that Swinton began to explore more commercial material.
These days, however, she has doubled down on the more singular undertakings that put her on the map, from Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s meditative “Memoria” to “The Eternal Daughter,” her latest collaboration with longtime friend and colleague Joanna Hogg.
“The Eternal Daughter,” which A24 released theatrically last week, merges Swinton’s performative ambition with a quasi-genre twist. She plays both Julie, a middle-aged filmmaker, and her mother Rosalind as the pair journey to a gothic country estate.
- 12/5/2022
- by Eric Kohn
- Indiewire
As the leaves crunch underfoot and the wintry chill intensifies, you may realize: it’s time to think of a good gift for that friend of yours who’s already packed their shelves to the gills with Blu-rays and back issues of Cahiers du Cinéma. Have no fear. Covering books, home video, music, posters, and apparel, here are some gift ideas for the dearest cinephiles in your life.Books And MAGAZINESFireflies Press recently published Pier Paolo Pasolini: Writing on Burning Paper: a beautiful set of two complementary volumes to honor the filmmaker’s centenary. The smaller book includes a revised translation of his poem “Poet of the Ashes,” while the larger volume includes tributes from 20 contemporary artists and critics, including Catherine Breillat, Jia Zhangke, Luc Moullet, Angela Schanelec, and Mike Leigh.Written by Karen Han, Bong Joon Ho: Dissident Cinema is a mid-career monograph covering the Korean auteur’s features,...
- 11/29/2022
- MUBI
The Welsh national anthem has become a talking point around the world since Wales’s team began competing in their first World Cup since 1958.
Wales’s stirring anthem is called “Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau”, which translates to “Old Land of My Fathers” in English.
When the Welsh team, headed up by captain Gareth Bale, and 3,000 Welsh supporters belted out the anthem at the country’s opening match against USA on Monday 21 November, it gave goosebumps to footballs fans around the globe.
Singer-songwriter Billy Bragg tweeted at the time: “Well Wales have won the national anthem singing contest. Their players looked proud to belt out their anthem while the US team looked faintly embarrassed to be singing in public.”
This year marks the first time the anthem has been sung at the tournament. The last time Wales were at a World Cup, they sang “God Save the Queen”.
Here are the...
Wales’s stirring anthem is called “Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau”, which translates to “Old Land of My Fathers” in English.
When the Welsh team, headed up by captain Gareth Bale, and 3,000 Welsh supporters belted out the anthem at the country’s opening match against USA on Monday 21 November, it gave goosebumps to footballs fans around the globe.
Singer-songwriter Billy Bragg tweeted at the time: “Well Wales have won the national anthem singing contest. Their players looked proud to belt out their anthem while the US team looked faintly embarrassed to be singing in public.”
This year marks the first time the anthem has been sung at the tournament. The last time Wales were at a World Cup, they sang “God Save the Queen”.
Here are the...
- 11/24/2022
- by Ellie Harrison
- The Independent - Music
Marrakech — Tilda Swinton, translucent, beautifully elf-ish, wearing a striped, Chanel kaftan, decked in a glittering bib of flowers. The quirky, white shirt collar and boyish, blond hair-cut, add a touch of seriousness to the Scottish actress’s original sense of style, befitting of her intelligent flow of words that roll seamlessly from her mouth to describe her career.
Swinton is being interviewed at the Marrakech Film Festival (Nov. 11-19), ahead of the closing night ceremony. Serving as the head of the festival’s jury in 2019, she has returned, this year, with her oldest friend and first director, Joanna Hogg, to show their ghost story “The Eternal Daughter.” This year, she is also a recipient of one of the festival’s honorary Golden Star awards.
Swinton sits side by side with Hogg (“The Souvenir”), for whom she plays two roles in the film, their third, consecutive collaboration, following on from Hogg’s two “Souvenir” films.
Swinton is being interviewed at the Marrakech Film Festival (Nov. 11-19), ahead of the closing night ceremony. Serving as the head of the festival’s jury in 2019, she has returned, this year, with her oldest friend and first director, Joanna Hogg, to show their ghost story “The Eternal Daughter.” This year, she is also a recipient of one of the festival’s honorary Golden Star awards.
Swinton sits side by side with Hogg (“The Souvenir”), for whom she plays two roles in the film, their third, consecutive collaboration, following on from Hogg’s two “Souvenir” films.
- 11/19/2022
- by Liza Foreman
- Variety Film + TV
When “Bones and All” picked up two prizes at the Venice Film Festival — Luca Guadagnino for best director and Taylor Russell for best young actor – there was a sense that the Lido laurel had been a long time coming for the Italian director.
Guadagnino had walked the awards ceremony red carpet with his mom, Alia, after flying back to Venice from Telluride, Colorado, where the tender cannibal romancer had also been rapturously received.
After being handed the Silver Lion, he warmly thanked Venice artistic director Alberto Barbera. “I wouldn’t be here this evening if it wasn’t for Alberto Barbera who decided to invite that crazy film I made 20 years ago, ‘The Protagonists,’” Guadagnino said. “Filmmaking is my life. I’ve been doing it since I was eight with my Super 8 shorts.”
Guadagnino’s career trajectory has been a long road full of twists and turns. And it...
Guadagnino had walked the awards ceremony red carpet with his mom, Alia, after flying back to Venice from Telluride, Colorado, where the tender cannibal romancer had also been rapturously received.
After being handed the Silver Lion, he warmly thanked Venice artistic director Alberto Barbera. “I wouldn’t be here this evening if it wasn’t for Alberto Barbera who decided to invite that crazy film I made 20 years ago, ‘The Protagonists,’” Guadagnino said. “Filmmaking is my life. I’ve been doing it since I was eight with my Super 8 shorts.”
Guadagnino’s career trajectory has been a long road full of twists and turns. And it...
- 11/16/2022
- by Nick Vivarelli
- Variety Film + TV
Published for the first time, Through the Billboard Promised Land Without Ever Stopping, chimes with many of the obsessions the director carried through his films
In Sebastiane, Derek Jarman and Paul Humfress’ 1976 film, the soon-to-be-martyred Roman soldier is warned by his friend Justin to stop fighting against their pagan authorities. “The truth,” Sebastiane responds, “is beautiful”. As they speak, Justin tends to the wounds of the third-century saint in an act of love that has the potential to endanger both of them if they are caught by their tyrannical overseer or their fellow soldiers. This moment of intimacy is luxuriant; where there could be a palpable sense of terror, Jarman and Humfress instead focus on the tenderness between two defiant men.
Sebastiane’s “truth” is not just his devotion to Christ in a pagan society, but also his willingness to receive and give affection in the overtly masculine, violent and...
In Sebastiane, Derek Jarman and Paul Humfress’ 1976 film, the soon-to-be-martyred Roman soldier is warned by his friend Justin to stop fighting against their pagan authorities. “The truth,” Sebastiane responds, “is beautiful”. As they speak, Justin tends to the wounds of the third-century saint in an act of love that has the potential to endanger both of them if they are caught by their tyrannical overseer or their fellow soldiers. This moment of intimacy is luxuriant; where there could be a palpable sense of terror, Jarman and Humfress instead focus on the tenderness between two defiant men.
Sebastiane’s “truth” is not just his devotion to Christ in a pagan society, but also his willingness to receive and give affection in the overtly masculine, violent and...
- 11/2/2022
- by Jessica White
- The Guardian - Film News
Five years on, it's easy to take for granted what an immediate tectonic shift "Call Me by Your Name" represented for queer, romantic, and contemporary cinema. It's one thing for a film to tell a love story between two men as sensitively and perceptively as it did, capturing every one of its microscopic inner movements and honoring their cumulative enormity, with both parties allowed to come alive so thoroughly as characters. To do so while also offering up one of the decade's most profound treatises on the mysteries of human connection, the nuances of identity, and the existential significance of giving oneself over to another is something else entirely.
In countless different ways, "Call Me by Your Name" is a wholly unique film, and — as its rabid fans know well — the most reliable way to recapture its magic is to watch it again and again. Existing as it does as...
In countless different ways, "Call Me by Your Name" is a wholly unique film, and — as its rabid fans know well — the most reliable way to recapture its magic is to watch it again and again. Existing as it does as...
- 9/26/2022
- by Leo Noboru Lima
- Slash Film
"We are all accomplices in the dream world of the soul."—Derek Jarman, Kicking the PricksDerek Jarman was a filmmaker, set designer, gardener, writer, and activist. But to list off items of Jarman’s biography in such a manner does not come close to being able to comprehend the magnitude of his singular artistry. Over the course of his life Jarman created a visual language of love, politics, and poetry through moving images.I recall the memory well, picking up a copy of Projections (Derek Jarman's Films From The Pet Shop Boys' First Tour), an Artificial Eye VHS tape that I found as a teenager in a charity shop in my small coastal hometown. The case stood out instantly. It became a piece of a puzzle that awakened within me the possibilities of film as an artform that could expand narrative—that film was also a visual representation of musicality and feeling.
- 7/27/2022
- MUBI
Vecna isn’t as terrifying in the bathroom.
Actor Jamie Campbell Bower, who played the complicated villain in “Stranger Things 4,” revealed that his terrifying Freddy Krueger-esque full-body prosthetics included a “flap” for him to use the restroom without getting out of costume.
“The bottom half of the suit sort of waist-down, they’re like a pair of trousers that I have to slip on,” Bower said during an interview on SiriusXM’s Octane. “Everything else is glued, but the bottom half are trousers. I have a flap that — this fucking flap — that goes from the chest underneath my buttcrack.”
Bower thanked “poor” prosthetic makeup artist Duncan Jarman for securing his genitals “down there” during the seven and a half hours worth of prosthetic application daily. Jarman chimed in during the SiriusXM Octane interview to joke, “Sometimes you have to get close up and personal with your actors.”
Bower went...
Actor Jamie Campbell Bower, who played the complicated villain in “Stranger Things 4,” revealed that his terrifying Freddy Krueger-esque full-body prosthetics included a “flap” for him to use the restroom without getting out of costume.
“The bottom half of the suit sort of waist-down, they’re like a pair of trousers that I have to slip on,” Bower said during an interview on SiriusXM’s Octane. “Everything else is glued, but the bottom half are trousers. I have a flap that — this fucking flap — that goes from the chest underneath my buttcrack.”
Bower thanked “poor” prosthetic makeup artist Duncan Jarman for securing his genitals “down there” during the seven and a half hours worth of prosthetic application daily. Jarman chimed in during the SiriusXM Octane interview to joke, “Sometimes you have to get close up and personal with your actors.”
Bower went...
- 7/7/2022
- by Samantha Bergeson
- Indiewire
By now, we all know, don’t we, that Stranger Things’ Henry Creel had a beyond hard time of it, what with being so very different that he was remanded to Dr. Brenner’s care and branded “One.” But what we could only guess at — until this very moment — was how tricky a proposition playing Vecna was for Jamie Campbell Bower, especially when natured called.
The procedure that ensued was, let’s be real, “very complicated!” he tells TVLine with a laugh. “The top half [of the costume] is glued [to my body], and then the bottom half is like these trousers, and there’s a flap.
The procedure that ensued was, let’s be real, “very complicated!” he tells TVLine with a laugh. “The top half [of the costume] is glued [to my body], and then the bottom half is like these trousers, and there’s a flap.
- 7/5/2022
- by Charlie Mason
- TVLine.com
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