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Of Angels and Apocalypse: The Cinema of Derek Jarman–07/11 – 07/31

Basic Rights is proud to sponsor the upcoming Derek Jarman series at the Northwest Film Center.

Of Angels and Apocalypse: The Cinema of Derek Jarman
July 11 – July 31

Derek Jarman (1942 – 1994) was the “enfant terrible” of British cinema in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s. Mixing past and future, theater and painting, performance art and visual abstraction, sex and politics, Jarman struggled for gay liberation. In a world devastated by AIDS, Jarman lived as participant and observer, synthesizing and presenting all that passed before him with honesty, originality, intelligence and unique artistic vision. The Northwest Film Center presents 10 Jarman films, including JUBILEE, BLUE, DEREK and more over 20 nights this July.
www.nwfilm.org

(Scroll below for complete schedule.)

JULY 12 SAT 8:30 PM

JUBILEE
GREAT BRITAIN 1978
DIRECTOR: DEREK JARMAN

Jarman’s wild detour into England’s punk scene, which is also his commentary on the decline of Western culture, still resonates today. In this bold and original psycho-fantasy, Queen Elizabeth I is transported to late twentieth-century Britain, where she meets a renegade women’s collective and witnesses their violent misadventures. With eloquent juggling of time, locations and sounds, Jarman—who did Ken Russell’s production design for THE DEVILS—comes to explicit new terms with history and prophesy. The Brian Eno soundtrack, also featuring music by Adam and the Ants, The Slits, Chelsea and the Electric Chairs, adds to the punk fervor. “With JUBILEE, the progressive merging of film and my reality was complete.”—Derek Jarman. (103 mins.)

JULY 13 SUN 8:30 PM

THE TEMPEST
GREAT BRITAIN 1979
DIRECTOR: DEREK JARMAN

In this free-wheeling adaptation of Shakespeare’s fanciful play, Jarman retains the poetry and drama of the original, but adds his own phantasmagoric imagery to create tableaux that speak as loudly as the actors. Shot on location in a fire-gutted castle, the story of Prospero (Heathcoate Williams), the deposed Duke of Milan; Miranda (Toyah Wilcox), his lusty daughter; and Ariel (Karl Johnson), the enslaved magician, delivers a bounty of surprises. Jarman’s imaginative romp honors the true spirit of the Bard himself. (95 mins.)

JULY 16 WED 7 PM

THE ANGELIC
CONVERSATION
GREAT BRITAIN 1985
DIRECTOR: DEREK JARMAN

Drawn from 14 of Shakespeare’s sonnets, each of which is addressed to a young man, Jarman’s melancholy reverie about sexual desire is a romantic mood piece about the pleasures of looking. Shot in super-8 and then blown up to 35mm, Jarman described it as “my most austere work, but also closest to my heart.” In the tradition of the avant-garde, Jarman’s visually arresting film is a tone poem where image and word (recitations by Judi Dench) transcend narrative. (78 mins.)

JULY 20 SUN 7 PM

CARAVAGGIO
GREAT BRITAIN 1986
DIRECTOR: DEREK JARMAN

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610) was among the greatest painters of the Italian Renaissance. He was certainly among the most controversial: openly bisexual, he was also an extremely violent man who was convicted of murder. Using his sensual paintings as autobiographical allegories, Jarman’s fantasy tells Caravaggio’s life story in tableau-like episodes, as the flashbacks of an impoverished, dying artist. The story, however, takes a backseat to Jarman’s daring narrative and striking visual style. Juxtaposing elements of the 16th and 20th centuries, weaving fact and fiction, reverence and irreverence, Jarman’s film reflects Caravaggio’s “visualization,” and is bathed in a light as deliberate as the chiaroscuro the painter perfected. (93 mins.)

JULY 23 WED 7 PM

THE LAST OF ENGLAND
GREAT BRITAIN 1987
DIRECTOR: DEREK JARMAN

Made after Jarman was diagnosed with HIV and not long after the death of his father, THE LAST OF ENGLAND is a post-apocalyptic work that eschews narrative in favor of a series of individual scenes that build in emotional power. A “state of the nation” address, it details the breakdown of English society during the 1980s, from the Falklands War, the bomb, and the Royal wedding to the machinations of Margaret Thatcher. (87 mins.)

JULY 27 SUN 7 PM

WITTGENSTEIN
GREAT BRITAIN 1993
DIRECTOR: DEREK JARMAN

Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the 20th century’s most influential philosophers, is the subject of Jarman’s radical attempt to dramatize the life of the mind on screen. A self-tortured eccentric who preferred detective fiction and the musicals of Carmen Miranda to
Aristotle, Wittgenstein provides a fitting subject for Jarman’s irreverent imagination and humor. A visually stunning and profoundly entertaining work about modern thought and the dark genius who revolutionized it. (75 mins.)

JULY 30 WED 7 PM

THE GARDEN
GREAT BRITAIN 1990
DIRECTOR: DEREK JARMAN

One of Jarman’s most personal works, THE GARDEN touches on the AIDS crisis and examines his own mortality. The early part of the film is dominated by scenes of the windswept landscape of the Kent coast, elemental images which are intercut with scenes of Jarman building a garden at home in the shadow of a nuclear power station. Slowly a narrative emerges in a series of dreamscapes and familiar Christian tableaux, as his garden becomes both Gethsemane and Eden. THE GARDEN, set against the background of contemporary Britain, examines the persecution of homosexuality through the centuries and investigates the role of the church in the AIDS crisis. “The Garden is a kaleidoscopic series of stunning and surprising images—disturbing, funny, beautiful, captivating.” —Toronto Film Festival. (92 mins.)

JULY 31 THU 7 PM

BLUE
GREAT BRITAIN 1993
DIRECTOR: DEREK JARMAN

Jarman’s last film, a post-minimalist tour-de-force influenced by the French painter Yves Klein, represents a stark contrast to his exceptional body of work. With its entire image limited to a screen of cerulean blue, Jarman’s life with AIDS is fleshed out with an astounding soundtrack by longtime collaborator/composer Simon Fisher Turner and the voices of Jarman, John Quentin, Nigel Terry and Tilda Swinton. “Like the explorer in the 16th-century woodcut who pulls back the curtain on which are painted the moon and the stars to reveal the void, Jarman has reached beyond every experiment in theater and film to grant the audience an experience of stunning strangeness and deep beauty. Suffering from AIDS, Jarman lays bare his physical, mental and spiritual state in a narration over a blue screen whose only images are those produced by your own retina: orange squares, flashes, shadows. BLUE functions as a non-sectarian mass, as heartbreak, and as a benediction. Like a great requiem, it forces you deep into yourself and back up towards the light.”—New York Film Festival. (76 mins.)