Biography
An accomplished painter, Derek Jarman entered films in the early '70s, designing sets for
Ken Russell's
The Devils (1971) and
Savage Messiah (1972). After making numerous experimental shorts, mostly in Super-8, he began helming features in 1979 with
Sebastiane, a controversial gay-themed account of Saint Sebastian, in which all the dialogue was spoken in Latin. Over the next 20 years Jarman frequently interwove historical evocation and unexpected anachronisms, particularly in his biopics
Caravaggio (1986) and
Wittgenstein (1993). His landmark non-narrative features of the '80s,
The Angelic Conversation (1985) and
The Last of England (1987), offer a painter's sense of texture, with Jarman transferring Super-8 footage onto video for his editing, and then transferring the video onto 35-mm film. Radical gay politics, a constant theme in his films, emerged most forcefully in the '90s with
The Garden (1990), which re-enacts incidents from the life of Christ with two gay lovers in place of Jesus;
Edward II (1992), his fiery adaptation of Christopher Marlowe's 16th-century tragedy; and his last film
Blue (1993), in which the sole visual element is an unchanging field of blue, while the soundtrack describes Jarman's thoughts and emotions in the face of his imminent death from AIDS. ~ All Movie Guide