Michael Derek Elworthy Jarman was an English film director, stage designer, diarist, artist, gardener, and author. He was outspoken about homosexuality, his public fight for gay rights, and his personal struggle with AIDS. In 1994, he died of an AIDS-related illness in London, aged 52.
About Derek Jarman in brief
Michael Derek Elworthy Jarman was an English film director, stage designer, diarist, artist, gardener, and author. He was outspoken about homosexuality, his public fight for gay rights, and his personal struggle with AIDS. In 1994, he died of an AIDS-related illness in London, aged 52. He is buried in the graveyard at St Clement’s Church, Old Romney, Kent. A blue plaque commemorating Jarman’s death was unveiled at Butler’s Wharf in London on 19 February 2019, the 25th anniversary of his death. Jarman first became known as a stage designer. His break in the film industry came as production designer for Ken Russell’s The Devils. He made his mainstream narrative filmmaking debut with Sebastiane, about the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian. This was one of the first British films to feature positive images of gay sexuality. He followed this with Jubilee, in which Queen Elizabeth I of England is seen to be transported forward in time to a desolate and brutal wasteland ruled by her twentieth-century namesake. The Last of England told the death of a country ravaged by its own internal decay and the restructuring of Thatcher’s government.
The Angelic Conversation was a commanding call to arms for a commanding personal cinema – a few of the few commanding works of cinema of the late 80s and 90s. Caravaggio became Jarman’s most famous film to date, and marked the beginning of a new phase in his filmmaking career. From then onwards, all his films would be partly funded by television companies, often receiving their most prominent exhibition in TV screenings. The Garden was entered into the 17th Moscow International Film Festival, and TheAngelic Conversation featured Toby Mott and other members of the Grey Organisation, a radical artist collective. The first semi-narrative film to result from this new semi-arrative phase, The Garden, won the Silver Bear for outstanding achievement at the 36th Berlin International Film festival, where it won an outstanding single achievement award. The last film, Caravagio, saw Jarman work with actress Tilda Swinton for the first time. It is still, barring the cult hit Jubilee, probablyJarman’s most widely known work.
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