Chichester Cinema at New Park
Derek
CHICHESTER INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
Part of the 22nd LLGFF on Tour
From Sebastiane (1976) to Blue (1992), Derek Jarman’s films constantly interrogated time and art, and epitomised his own era. He was a painter, part of the moment that made sixties London a capital of the art world. He was a filmmaker, perhaps the single most crucial figure of British independent cinema through the seventies, eighties and nineties. He lived as a gay man surfing the joys of Gay Liberation and the sorrows of Aids. He lived as a participant observer, noting with pen or camera all that passed before him - from punk to Thatcher, from Hampstead Heath to film premiere.
Now those images will serve to place his art in his time, to produce a fascinating history that we can put to use. As well as the feature films and Super 8 films, which span three decades, there are the extensive video clips he recorded from the early seventies, for artists from the Smiths to the Pet Shop Boys, and from television to film festivals in Japan, Berlin and Cologne. At the centre of the film is the time capsule that Derek left before his death, & in the midst of that great creative period that would produce Edward II, Caravaggio & Blue, he recorded a day long interview in 1990 with Colin MacCabe. It is his message in a bottle; a survey of his life from the point of view of his death; a talisman for the future. Tilda Swinton (who both wrote & narrates the film) walks us through a soulless contemporary London, contrasting Jarman’s spiritual richness & energy with the corporate dullness of much in contemporary filmmaking.
A BetaSP presentation in The Studio (limited seating)
(Tickets £5)
UK · 2008 · Isaac Julian · 76min
