“A man will be forgotten in time and no one will remember our work,“ says Derek Jarman, angry and near death in his last film BLUE. Derek Jarman, one of the most important voices of the 70s, 80s and 90s, still hasn‘t been forgotten. On January 31st the filmmaker, artist and queer activist who died in 1994 would‘ve been 80 years old. To mark this occasion, the British Film Institute has restored and digitized many of Jarman‘s films.


Derek Jarman began his film career as a production designer in Ken Russell‘s notorious film THE DEVILS (1971). His first feature, SEBASTIANE (1976), about a pacifist Roman soldier who sublimates his queer desire by worshipping phoebus Apollo, was the first explicitly gay British film. In Germany, SEBASTIANE only became known after the success of Jarman‘s second film JUBILEE (1977/1978). JUBILEE was the first film about the new punk scene and remained the most important film of the movement: Queen Elizabeth I travels across late 70s London with the magic of occultist John Dee and the help of the spirit guide Ariel and gets involved in a scene of nihilist and homicidal punks like Vivienne Westwood model Jordan playing “Amyl Nitrate“ and Toyah Wilcox playing “Mad.“


Jarman began his queer reading of Shakespeare with his adaptation of THE TEMPEST (1979) which was shot in Stateleigh Abbey, a derelict English country house. He continued this with THE ANGELIC CONVERSATION (1985), with Judy Dench reciting Shakespeare‘s sonnets with a soundtrack from Coil juxtaposed with super-8 images blown up to 35mm which Jarman often slowed down. The effect was a celebration of gay desire and the male body. In 1986 the right-wing British government and Margaret Thatcher reacted to the strengthened LGBTQ+ movement by issuing Section 28, similar to today‘s laws in many eastern European countries, which forbid the “promotion“ of the homosexual lifestyle in schools and public institutions and deprived numerous LGBTQ+ organizations of public funding making it more difficult to use public spaces. Jarman was one of the most important activists of a widespread movement against Section 28 - a legislation that was upheld until the year 2000.


After JUBILEE, CARAVAGGIO (1986) was Jarman‘s most successful film with the mainstream arthouse audience. The love triangle between the queer painter, his model and his girlfriend was enveloped in opulent images with a rarely before seen precision of lighting which recreated Caravaggio‘s paintings and made the film images look like paintings. In the winter of 1986 Jarman found out that he was HIV-positive and spoke about it openly. In the social atmosphere of the beginning of the AIDS pandemic, this was an incredibly brave step which also led to Jarman receiving death threats.