Manchester Art Gallery

We are still waiting to establish when we can safely re-open the gallery and what that will mean for re-scheduling the exhibition. In the meantime, we want to share some of the material that we planned to include in the gallery and additional content that we have found during lockdown. Our friends at LUMA Foundation, Basilisk Communications and BBC Arts have given us access to film and audio content from their collections and archives so that we can present an on-line programme that covers different aspects of Jarman’s work, from painting, film and literature to gardening and activism.

We have asked various contributors to talk about aspects of Jarman’s life and work that we can pair with Jarman related film and audio. We’ll be adding other things to see, read and listen to over the coming weeks.

Although of an older generation, Jarman was fascinated by Punk: he shot the first ever footage of the Sex Pistols and directed one of the major film features from within that moment, Jubilee. This began with a Super 8 he filmed of punk pioneer Jordan dancing, but developed into a wider look at the state of England in 1977. The film brought him into prominence as a caustic chronicler of the national mood, seen in such paintings as Margaret Thatcher’s Lunch, as well as reinventing him for a younger generation of artists and filmmakers. This facet of Derek’s work can be seen at its height in the 1987 feature The Last of England: a fast cut polemic – to the pace of pop videos – against the degradation of English life under the heavy hand of Mrs. Thatcher.

Read the full transcript of an interview with Jarman for Jon Savage’s book England’s Dreaming: Sex Pistols and Punk Rock.

Jarman often showed his films silent, as we planned to do in the exhibition and have also done here, but sometimes he used different musical pieces to accompany his films. For Jordan’s Dance one of Jarman’s suggestions was Brahms’ Violin Concerto, and in Jubilee he set the sequence to an 1884 composition by Minkus for the ballet Giselle, but you could choose your own accompaniment. We’d love to hear your suggestions.

Jordan’s Dance Derek Jarman, 1977, S8mm, Colour, 16:15 min
With Jordan, Steve Treatment, Jean Marc Prouveur, Howard Malin
Sections from this film are included in Jarman’s feature film Jubilee
© and courtesy LUMA Foundation
Courtesy Basilisk Communications Ltd

I first met Derek in the late 1980s, while I was directing a 20-minute film insert on AIDS in film and TV for Channel 4’s Media Show. I was intrigued by the fact that Derek owned just about every book by maverick archetypal psychologist James Hillman, who was something of a mentor to me. Entire lines from James’s book had made it into the dialogue of Caravaggio. The Arena doc was made in a rush to coincide with the release of The Garden. I was blessed with help from my friend the film-maker John Furse, and the possibility of interviewing all the immensely articulate (and not uncritical) contributors, over three concentrated days at Lime Grove Studios, against a black background, which both made it more efficient and resonated with the black paintings Derek was doing at the time, one of which we see him make – in a hurry – in the documentary. I realise now that the adrenalin-fuelled speed with which we made the film mirrored the ‘fizz” as Tilda Swinton calls it in her interview, that characterised Derek’s creative process. Most of all I was blessed with a brilliant film editor, Andrew Findlay, and the freedom granted by Derek to intercut different films as much as we liked, and to use the soundtrack of one over the images of another. Derek was like that: he believed totally in spontaneity, freedom and experimentation.

Mark Kidel is a documentary film maker specialising in the arts and music. He works mainly in the UK and France. His most recent films are feature docs about Elvis Costello and Cary Grant. He is currently working on a feature doc about Leonard Cohen, developing a major series about popular music and drugs and a number of other projects.

Running Time: 58:47 min
Producer and Director: Mark Kidel
Programme Consultant: John Furse
With thanks to BBC Arts, Basilisk Communications, Keith Collins Will Trust, BFI, Euro London Films

Jason Wood is the Creative Director for Film and Culture at HOME. A visiting Professor at Manchester School of Art, he is also the author of multiple published works on cinema.

HOME and Manchester Art Gallery were working together to present a season of Jarman’s film to accompany the exhibition. Jason had curated a selection of films and events with Jarman collaborators and fans, which we will re-schedule when the exhibition takes place. Jason has written an introduction and overview of Jarman’s film output, originally commissioned by the BFI for a series of Blu Ray and DVD issues of Jarman’s work, which he has updated and shared with us here.

Watch Jarman’s films via the BFI player

If you would like to see some of the films discussed you can view many of Jarman’s feature films through BFI Player here.

Andrew Moor from the Department of English at Manchester Metropolitan University researches LGBTQ+ and British cinema history. He has written extensively on the films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, whose visionary approach and use of soundtrack influenced Jarman’s own films. This influence is discussed in the Radio 3 programme Free Thinking, first broadcast in 2014, which you can listen to below. Moor’s essay Spirit and Matter: Romantic Mythologies in the films of Derek Jarman features in the Manchester University Press publication Territories of Desire in Queer Culture: Refiguring the Contemporary Boundaries (edited by D. Alderson, L. Anderson), which he has kindly agreed to share here.

Andrew has also sent a link to a discussion he found on YouTube between Powell and Pressburger’s cinematographer Jack Cardiff and Derek Jarman

Essay reproduced courtesy Manchester University Press.

Composer Simon Fisher Turner, who recorded many of Jarman’s film soundtracks, including Caravaggio, The Last of England and Blue talks about Jarman’s use of music in film and artist Tacita Dean recalls how Jarman inspired her to take on working in film. Samira Ahmed also discusses Jarman’s career with Briony Hanson, Director of Film at the British Council and writer and broadcaster Jon Savage.

First broadcast on BBC Radio 3, 2014
22:45 min
With thanks to BBC Arts and each of the contributors

Modern Nature is Jarman’s chronicle of life in his remote cottage on the barren coast of Dungeness in the years after his HIV diagnosis. Facing an uncertain future, Jarman found solace in nature, growing all manner of plants. Some perished beneath wind and sea-spray while others flourished, creating brilliant, unexpected beauty in the wilderness.

Modern Nature is both a diary of the garden and a meditation by Jarman on his own life: his childhood, his time as a young gay man in the 1960s and his renowned career as an artist, writer and film-maker. It is at once a lament for a lost generation, an unabashed celebration of gay sexuality, and a devotion to all that is living.

Rupert Everett knew Jarman personally and features in the diaries. The programme was recorded on location at Prospect Cottage, Jarman’s former home, at the very desk where much of Modern Nature was written and features a rich soundscape of the house and area where it was recorded alongside a soundtrack of music taken from works by Benjamin Britten.

Originaly broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in June 2019, Rupert Everett narrating Modern Nature will be available to listen to in full until September 2020.

Written by Derek Jarman
Read by Rupert Everett
Produced, abridged and directed by Simon Richardson

Programme image: Derek Jarman outside Prospect Cottage in Dungeness courtesy of photographer Howard Sooley.

Family Album is a short film featuring photographs and voiceover from Anna and Emma Beynon-Gray telling the story of Derek Jarman officiating their wedding ceremony on Dungeness beach years before the changes in marriage legislation.

Running Time: 1:34
Director: Alison Ivory
Music: David Poore
First shown BBC2 in March 1996

PROTEST!, published by Thames and Hudson 2020
IMMA and Thames and Hudson have published a major new monograph on Derek Jarman to accompany the retrospective, covering Jarman’s artistic development as well as reflecting on his life and legacy. The book will feature contributions from Seán Kissane, Curator, IMMA; Sir Norman Rosenthal; Jonny Bruce, gardener and journalist; Professor Robert Mills, University of London; Jon Savage, author and filmmaker; Michael Charlesworth, an authority on landscape and the history of gardens and author of the book ‘Derek Jarman, Critical Lives’, and writers Olivia Laing and Philip Hoare.

Buy Protest! from the Manchester Art Gallery online shop.