Derek Jarman

The film established many of the characteristics of his work: an openly queer perspective, historical and literary source material treated anachronistically, and a willingness to court controversy. He went on to direct a body of unconventional films including the punk-inflected Jubilee (1978), the stylised biographical drama Caravaggio (1986), and the politically charged adaptation Edward II (1991). Consistently working outside mainstream British film production, Jarman often struggled to secure financing and developed a distinctive low-budget, experimental practice, frequently using Super 8 film and video. He worked repeatedly with a close circle of collaborators, including actor Tilda Swinton, production designer Christopher Hobbs, costume designer Sandy Powell, producer James Mackay and composer Simon Fisher Turner. Diagnosed with HIV in 1986, Jarman became one of the first public figures in Britain to speak openly about living with the disease. Throughout his career, Jarman was outspoken about homosexuality, his public fight for gay rights, and his personal struggle with HIV. His final feature film, Blue (1993), consisting of an unchanging blue screen accompanied by a layered soundtrack, was released four months before his death from an AIDS-related illness.

Jarman was born at the Royal Victoria Nursing Home in Northwood, Middlesex, England, the son of Elizabeth Evelyn (née Puttock) and Lancelot Elworthy Jarman. His father was a Royal Air Force officer, born in New Zealand. After a prep school education at Hordle House School, Jarman went on to board at Canford School in Dorset, an experience he found stifling. Under the guidance of the school's art master, Robin Noscoe, Jarman developed a lasting interest in painting, which he later characterised as a form of "self-defence". Although he had been offered a place with the Slade School of Fine Art at University College London, Jarman deferred entry after agreeing with his father that he would first pursue an academic degree. He studied English, History and the History of Art at King's College London between 1960 and 1963. This was followed by four years at the Slade. From 1966 to 1969, Jarman rented a two-room flat on the top floor of 60 Liverpool Road, London, sharing rooms during the last year with fellow artist Keith Milow. In August 1969, he moved to Upper Ground, opposite Blackfriars Bridge, the first of a series of warehouses in the London Docklands. In his own words: "an exhilarating change after seven years in cramped Georgian terrace houses and basements [..] the warehouse allowed me to slip quietly away from the 'scene' which for five years had been the centre of my life – and had now exhausted itself – and establish my own idiosyncratic mode of living". In the 1970s, Jarman had a studio at Butler's Wharf, a riverside complex that housed a number of artists and designers. Among them was the sculptor and performance artist Andrew Logan, whose studio hosted the Alternative Miss World contest. Jarman took part in the event and, appearing as Miss Crêpe Suzette, won the 1975 contest before a judging panel that included the painter David Hockney.

Jarman studied painting at the Slade from 1963 to 1967. Within two terms, although still producing semi-abstract paintings, he was increasingly drawn to projects that mixed disciplines, foreshadowing the multimedia practice that would later encompass collage, found objects, scrapbooks, film and design. In 1966 a selection of his student work was exhibited at the Rimmell Gallery, and in 1967 he was included in the Young Contemporaries exhibition at the Tate, where he won the Peter Stuyvesant Foundation Prize. During this period he worked primarily in oil painting as well as mixed-media assemblage. In February 1969 Jarman had his first solo exhibition at the Lisson Gallery, showing fourteen landscapes, ballet designs and, in the basement space, what was described as an “environmental and additive sculpture”. Although increasingly known for his filmmaking, Jarman continued to paint throughout his career. In 1986 he was shortlisted for the Turner Prize. Between 1986 and 1987 he produced a large number of small paintings embedding pieces of glass and found objects into thick black tar. In 1989, at the Third Eye Centre in Glasgow, he created an installation featuring a bed surrounded by barbed wire and pasted with homophobic newspaper headlines, with two apparently naked men asleep within it. In 1991, with the assistance of Peter Fillingham and Karl Lydon, Jarman produced an installation for an exhibition at the Design Museum exploring the relationship between designers and consumers. The work recreated the garden at Prospect Cottage against a large photographic backdrop of its Dungeness setting. In February 1992 the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow mounted an exhibition of his assemblages and recent landscapes titled At Your Own Risk, which included AIDS-related works incorporating condoms, pill boxes and crucifixes. The same year he produced the Queer series, exhibited at the Manchester Art Gallery, characterised by thick paint surfaces incised with politically charged words and phrases. In his final years, despite severe deterioration of his eyesight due to AIDS-related illness, Jarman continued to paint with assistance from Piers Clemmet and Karl Lydon in the studio of Richard Salmon. Late exhibitions included Queer at Manchester City Art Gallery (1992) and Evil Queen: The Last Paintings at the Whitworth Art Gallery in 1994.

Jarman worked as a stage designer throughout his career. In 1968 his designs for Jazz Calendar attracted the attention of John Gielgud, who invited him to design a production of Don Giovanni. While Jazz Calendar was widely praised, the subsequent Don Giovanni production received a comparatively poor critical response. In 1982 Jarman collaborated again with Ken Russell on a production of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rake's Progress for the Teatro Comunale in Florence. In 1988 he directed Sylvano Bussotti’s opera L'Ispirazione, first staged in Florence. Jarman also directed the 1989 concert tour by Pet Shop Boys, a theatrical production incorporating costume and specially shot films to accompany individual songs. Jarman was the author of several books, including his autobiography Dancing Ledge (1984), which recounts his life up to the age of forty and reflects on gay life in London from the 1960s to the 1980s. Other published works include the poetry collection A Finger in the Fishes Mouth; the diaries Modern Nature and Smiling In Slow Motion; and the prose works The Last of England (also published as Kicking the Pricks) and Chroma. His film scripts were also published, including Blue, War Requiem, Caravaggio, Queer Edward II and Wittgenstein: The Terry Eagleton Script/The Derek Jarman Film. He also published Derek Jarman's Garden and At Your Own Risk. In the later years of his life Jarman created a distinctive shingle garden at Prospect Cottage in Dungeness, Kent, in the shadow of Dungeness nuclear power station. The timber cottage, weatherproofed with tar, bears painted text from John Donne’s 1633 poem The Sun Rising. The garden was composed of flotsam gathered from the beach and salt-tolerant plants arranged against the shingle landscape, and has since been the subject of several books.

On 22 December 1986, Jarman was diagnosed as HIV positive and discussed his condition in public. His illness prompted him to move to Prospect Cottage, Dungeness, in Kent, near the nuclear power station. In 1994, he died of an AIDS-related illness in London, aged 52. He was an atheist. He is buried in the graveyard at St Clement's Church, Old Romney, Kent. In his last years, Jarman was emotionally and practically supported by the companionship of Keith Collins (1963–2018), a young man whom he had met in 1987. While they were not sexually involved (Collins had his own partner), the relationship became essential for both of them. Jarman left Prospect Cottage to him. A blue plaque commemorating Jarman was unveiled at Butler's Wharf in London on 19 February 2019, the 25th anniversary of his death.

In 2014 the British Film Institute mounted Queer Pagan Punk, the largest retrospective of Jarman's films ever presented in the United Kingdom, marking the twentieth anniversary of his death. From 15 November 2019 to 23 February 2020, the Irish Museum of Modern Art presented Derek Jarman: Protest!, a major retrospective exhibition curated by Seán Kissane. In 2021 the exhibition was re-presented at Manchester Art Gallery, curated by Fiona Corridan and Jon Savage. In 2020 the Garden Museum in London staged Derek Jarman: My Garden's Boundaries Are the Horizon, which recreated elements of the garden at Prospect Cottage and displayed objects from Jarman's estate.

In 2020 a public campaign led by Art Fund raised £3.5 million in ten weeks to secure Prospect Cottage for the nation. The campaign enabled Art Fund to purchase the property from the Keith Collins Will Trust and to establish a permanent public programme, as well as funding conservation of the building, its contents and its garden. Prior to the appeal, the cottage had been at risk of private sale and dispersal. Artist Tacita Dean was instrumental in this campaign and served as a creative face for the campaign.

Ostia (as Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1987, dir. Julian Cole) Prick Up Your Ears (as Patrick Procktor, uncredited, 1987, dir. Stephen Frears) Dead Cat (as Medicine Man, 1989, dir. David Lewis) The Clearing (1994, dir. Alexis Bisticas)

Jazz Calendar (Royal Opera House, London, 1968, choreo. Frederick Ashton) Throughway (Jeannetta Cochrane Theatre, London, 1968, choreo. Stere Popescu) Silver Apples of the Moon (New Theatre, Oxford, 1973, choreo. Tim Spain) One (London Contemporary Dance Theatre on tour, 1980, choreo. Tom Jobe)

Don Giovanni (Coliseum, London, 1968, dir. John Gielgud) The Rake's Progress (Teatro della Pergola, Florence, 1982, dir. Ken Russell)

Poet of the Anemones (Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, London, 1969, dir. Nicholas Wright) The Secret of the Universe (ICA, London, 1980, dir. Ian Kellgren) [with Steven Meaha] Waiting for Godot (Queens Theatre, London, 1991, dir. Les Blair) The Maids (Edinburgh Festival, 1992 & Heaven, London, 1993, dir. Christopher Payton)

Jarman began his career as a designer for the stage. His first major professional commission was designing sets and costumes for Jazz Calendar (1968), a ballet choreographed by Frederick Ashton, whose cast included Rudolf Nureyev. A chance meeting brought Jarman to the attention of the filmmaker Ken Russell, who invited him to design the sets for The Devils (1971) and Savage Messiah (1972), marking his entry into film production design. At roughly the same period, Jarman began making films after being lent a camera by a friend. His earliest works were experimental Super 8 short films, made largely with friends. These films explored recurring interests in ritual and magic, documented aspects of gay subculture, and experimented formally. One of the first of these films was Studio Bankside, an experimental documentation of Jarman's warehouse studio and the community that inhabited it. At the space, Jarman also hosted informal film screenings and parties, at which feature films, underground cinema, and Super 8 works — including his own — were shown. Jarman made his mainstream narrative filmmaking debut with Sebastiane (1976), about the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian. This was one of the first British films to feature positive images of gay sexuality; its dialogue was entirely in Latin. Music for the film was composed by Brian Eno. Sebastiane premiered at the Locarno Film Festival and subsequently opened at the Gate Cinema in London, where it enjoyed a well-attended run. Inspired by meeting the punk icon Jordan, Jarman's next film was Jubilee (1978), 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. Jubilee has been described as "Britain's only decent punk film", and featured punk groups and figures such as Jayne County of Wayne County & the Electric Chairs, Toyah Willcox, Adam and the Ants and The Slits. This was followed in 1979 by an adaptation of Shakespeare's The Tempest. The film was shot largely inside Stoneleigh Abbey in Warwickshire, and Jarman made changes to Shakespeare's text. The then 75-year-old singer Elisabeth Welch (credited only as "A Goddess") appears, performing her signature song "Stormy Weather". Jarman's next major project was a film on the life of the Italian painter Caravaggio, a screenplay he first began writing in 1978. The project proved difficult to finance, and its development extended over several years. In the intervening period, Jarman continued to produce short and medium-length films, including Imagining October (1984), which drew parallels he perceived between Stalin's Russia and Thatcher's Britain. The film ran for eight weeks as an installation at Tate Britain. During this period Jarman met James Mackay, who became a key collaborator and producer on his subsequent work. At the same time, Jarman began making music videos, approaching the form in a characteristically idiosyncratic way. His first was Broken English: Three Songs by Marianne Faithfull, which comprised visual interpretations of "Witch's Song", "The Ballad of Lucy Jordan" and the title track "Broken English". At a time when music videos were still relatively uncommon, the production of a single twelve-minute work spanning three songs was highly unusual. Jarman would go on to make music videos for artists including the Smiths and Pet Shop Boys. Frustrated by the formality of 35mm film production and by the prolonged periods of inactivity associated with institutional funding — the production of Caravaggio would ultimately span eight years — Jarman and Mackay produced The Angelic Conversation (1985) as a means of circumventing conventional production methods. The film was shot on Super 8 and video formats and later blown up to 35mm for exhibition. Its imagery is accompanied by the voice of Judi Dench reciting Shakespeare's sonnets. The film featured Toby Mott and other members of the Grey Organisation, a radical artist collective. At the end of 1985, the critic Michael O'Pray organised a touring retrospective of Jarman's work entitled Of Angels and Apocalypse. Shortly afterwards, Jarman's three feature films to date were broadcast on Channel 4 as part of a season presented by the critic David Robinson. The screenings generated considerable controversy. Mary Whitehouse petitioned the Director of Public Prosecutions to bring charges against the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) for permitting the broadcasts, while Jubilee and Sebastiane were repeatedly cited in relation to the so-called "video nasties" bill. Winston Churchill wrote to The Times criticising the IBA, and the film director Michael Winner publicly accused Jarman of making pornography. Funding for Caravaggio finally materialised in the mid-1980s, marking Jarman's return to the narrative period film, though the work retained the experimentation and anachronism characteristic of his earlier features. The film includes overt depictions of homosexual love, narrative ambiguity, and staged recreations of Caravaggio's best-known paintings. Caravaggio also marked the beginning of Jarman's collaboration with Tilda Swinton, who would next work with him on the “Depuis le Jour” segment of the opera anthology film Aria and appear in all of his subsequent feature films. The film was entered into the 36th Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the Silver Bear for an outstanding single achievement. Released in 1986, Caravaggio attracted a comparatively wide audience and remains, alongside the cult success Jubilee, one of Jarman's most widely known works. This was partly due to the involvement, for the first time on a Jarman feature, of Channel 4 in funding and distribution. Funded by the British Film Institute and produced by Colin MacCabe, the film marked the beginning of a new phase in Jarman's career, in which all of his subsequent features would receive partial funding from television companies and prominent broadcast exhibition.} In December 1986, Jarman learned that he was HIV positive. Against medical advice, he informed friends of his diagnosis and soon afterwards publicly disclosed his HIV status, becoming one of the first public figures in Britain to do so. From this point he adopted a more outspoken role in addressing the impact of the AIDS epidemic on the gay community. Already angered by what he regarded as the inadequacy of the government's response to the crisis, Jarman became increasingly involved in gay rights activism following the Thatcher government's proposed Clause 28, which sought to prohibit the “promotion” of homosexuality in schools. Passed into law in 1988 as Section 28, the legislation became a catalyst for a period of active political engagement that continued for the remainder of Jarman’s life. Jarman's reinvigorated political fury was already visible in his next feature, The Last of England (1987). As with The Angelic Conversation — but on a larger and more ambitious scale — the film was made without a script and shot primarily on Super 8 film. The Last of England told the death of a country, ravaged by its own internal decay and the economic restructuring of Thatcher's government. In 1989, Jarman's film War Requiem, produced by Don Boyd, brought Laurence Olivier out of retirement for what would be Olivier's last screen performance. The film uses Benjamin Britten's eponymous anti-war requiem as its soundtrack and juxtaposes violent footage of war with the mass for the dead and the passionate humanist poetry of Wilfred Owen. Jarman's next feature, The Garden (1990), was shot largely around his garden on the shingle beach at Dungeness. Loosely structured around the Passion of Jesus, the film was conceived as a collaborative project and shot on a mixture of 16mm and Super 8 film. During production Jarman became seriously ill; the film was largely edited without his direct involvement. The Garden was entered into the 17th Moscow International Film Festival, which Jarman described as “the first official performance of a gay movie in the Soviet Union”. This was followed by an adaptation of Christopher Marlowe’s play Edward II, which recounts the reign of the English king and the political crisis that follows his relationship with his favourite, Piers Gaveston. Jarman emphasised the play’s queer dimensions, explicitly depicting Edward and Gaveston as lovers and framing the conspiracy against them as the actions of a hostile and homophobic establishment. Produced by Working Title and the BBC for the latter's Screen Two series, Edward II (1991) was made on the largest budget of Jarman’s career to that point. The film features a performance of "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye" by Annie Lennox. The previous year, Jarman had been slated to direct the song's music video as part of the Red Hot + Blue project, but was too ill to film; as a tribute, the video features family film footage of Jarman's childhood. Jarman's next film, Wittgenstein (1993), was commissioned as part of a series of films on the lives and ideas of philosophers, produced by Tariq Ali for Channel 4. The original screenplay based on the life of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, written by the literary critic Terry Eagleton, was extensively rewritten by Jarman during pre-production and filming, resulting in a radical shift in tone and structure, although much of Eagleton's dialogue was retained. Rather than unfolding in a naturalistic setting, the film is staged against a black backdrop, with actors and symbolic props arranged in an abstract, theatrical space, reflecting a consciously Brechtian approach. By the time of his 1993 film Blue, Jarman was losing his sight and dying of AIDS-related complications. Blue consists of a single shot of International Klein Blue filling the screen, as background to a soundtrack composed by Simon Fisher Turner, and featuring original music by Coil and other artists, in which Jarman describes his life and vision. When it was shown on British television, Channel 4 carried the image whilst the soundtrack was broadcast simultaneously on BBC Radio 3. Blue was unveiled at the 1993 Venice Biennale with Jarman in attendance and subsequently entered the collections of the Walker Art Institute; Centre Georges Pompidou, MoMA and Tate. His final work as a film-maker was the film Glitterbug, made for the Arena slot on BBC Two, and broadcast shortly after Jarman's death.

Jarman's life and work have been the subject of several documentary and artistic responses. The Last Paintings of Derek Jarman (1995), directed by Mark Jordan for Granada Television, documented the making of his final works and coincided with the exhibition Evil Queen at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester. Director Andy Kimpton-Nye made two films addressing Jarman's work: Derek Jarman: Life as Art (2004), a documentary featuring interviews with collaborators including Tilda Swinton and Simon Fisher Turner, and The Gospel According to St Derek (2014), which examined his filmmaking practice and cultural legacy. In 2008 artist filmmaker Isaac Julien released Derek, a biographical film created in collaboration with Tilda Swinton. The film draws extensively on archival footage and incorporates material from a day-long interview Jarman gave to Colin McCabe. Other screen works include Red Duckies (2006), directed by Luke Seomore and Joseph Bull and commissioned by Dazed & Confused for World AIDS Day, and Delphinium: A Childhood Portrait of Derek Jarman (2009), directed by Matthew Mishory, which combines narrative and documentary elements in portraying Jarman's early life. Delphinium screened at international film festivals and is held in the BFI National Archive. Saintmaking: Derek Jarman and the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (2021): a documentary by Marco Alessi, was commissioned by The Guardian to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Jarman's canonisation into the first British living gay saint by the group of queer activist nuns, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. Jarman's final film Blue has also been reinterpreted for the stage. Blue Now (2023), directed by Neil Bartlett with music by Simon Fisher Turner, presented a live performance adaptation that toured venues in the United Kingdom.

Jarman's early Super-8mm work has been included on some of the DVD releases of his films.

The Devils (1971, dir. Ken Russell) Savage Messiah (1972, dir. Ken Russell)