Derek Jarman x 3
Having originally trained as a painter, Derek Jarman entered the film industry as production designer on Ken Russell’s The Devils, and the mysterious relationship between painting and cinema was among the many questions he would explore in his questing work as a filmmaker, which abounded in art historical references, and which ended with his Blue, a meditation of color as character released shortly before his death from AIDS-related complications. Alternately a prophet of doom and a poet of pleasure, Jarman made films that put him in conversation with immortal figures such as Shakespeare, Caravaggio, and Wittgenstein. These were conversations among equals.
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Sebastiane
Directed by Derek Jarman | 90 mins | 1976
Jarman’s feature debut—co-directed with Humfress—makes blatant the latent homoeroticism in artistic renderings of the biblical story of the martyrdom of St. Sebastian, reveling in the male form while recounting a tale of repressed desire turned to sadism ... -
Caravaggio
Directed by Derek Jarman | 93 mins | 1986
A brazenly anachronistic and sensual imagining of the life of Renaissance renegade Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (Nigel Terry), seen juggling two lovers (Sean Bean’s Ranuccio and Tilda Swinton’s Lena) while scandalizing the establishment. The debut fi... -
Blue
Directed by Derek Jarman | 79 mins | 1993
Over an unceasing, monochromatic blue frame, voices read a poetic text in which Jarman muses on his physical and mental deterioration as well as the endless implications of the color blue. Jarman, dying of AIDS, would be gone within a year, having left be...
