José Da Silva, Author at QAGOMA Blog

The tenderness of the wolves

Posted by José Da Silva ● 4 Oct 2017

The Australian Cinémathèque begins a two-part retrospective of works by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. His films were provocative during his lifetime, and his stories continue to resonate with contemporary audiences.

I’d like to be for cinema what Shakespeare was for theatre, Marx for politics and Freud for psychology: someone after whom nothing is as it used to be.¹

During his short and self-destructive life (he died of a drug overdose at 37), Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1945–82) worked at a frenzied pace and fashioned a practice that was both mercurial and brutally honest. Between 1966 and 1982, he directed an astonishing 39 films (including six television movies and series) and four video productions. He directed 24 stage plays, four radio plays, and worked as an actor, dramatist, cameraman, composer, designer, editor, producer and theatre manager. He famously claimed, ‘I don’t throw bombs; I make films’, and cherished his position as one of the most polarising and influential figures of New German Cinema.²

Fassbinder

Fassbinder has been described as many things: prodigious to the point of folly; a homosexual who loved men and women equally; an unashamed exhibitionist; a tyrant in the workplace; and a radical, no matter your political persuasion. Born to a middle-class family in Bavaria, Fassbinder was quick to denounce the propriety of then-West German society, which he felt impeded his personal freedoms. He began his career with Munich’s Action-Theater ensemble, amid the disillusionment that followed the failed protests of May 1968, and there he wrote and directed a series of plays that he would later adapt for the screen. Without a formal university education, Fassbinder worked tirelessly to prove himself and to create works that would expose the foolishness and hypocrisy he saw in human relationships. He reasoned:

I detest the idea . . . that the love between two persons can lead to salvation. All my life I have fought against this oppressive type of relationship. Instead, I believe in searching for a kind of love that somehow involves all of mankind . . .³

Love is Colder than Death

When his epochal first feature was mercilessly booed at the Berlin Film Festival, Fassbinder merely clasped his hands over his head and shook them in triumph. Much like Jean-Luc Godard had done nearly a decade earlier with his debut Breathless, Fassbinder catapulted himself into a new wave of filmmaking with a deconstruction of the American gangster film. As filmmaker and close Fassbinder friend Christian Braad Thomsen put it, “Fassbinder began where Godard had stopped, and showed his first attempts to construct a new film language on the smoking ruins which Godard left behind.” Just 23 years old at the time of filming, Fassbinder assumed the lead role of Franz, a small-time pimp who becomes embroiled in a love triangle with his mistress, a prostitute named Joanna (Hanna Schygulla), and handsome crook Bruno (Ulli Lommel). When Franz refuses to join the local mob, they recruit Bruno to convince him, setting off an escalating chain of crime as tensions mount and alliances are challenged.

Fear Eats the Soul

Shot in just two weeks as a filmmaking exercise to fill time between Effi Briest and Martha, Fear Eats the Soul was the first of Fassbinder’s films to bring him international recognition. A loose reworking of Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows 1955 as well as an anecdote from Fassbinder’s own film The American Soldier, Fear Eats the Soul explores the unlikely relationship between a widowed cleaning woman and a Moroccan mechanic 25 years her junior. Looking for safe haven in a rainstorm, Emmi (Brigitte Mira) ducks into a bar of migrant workers and finds herself dancing with the charismatic Ali (El Hedi ben Salem). They form a bond through their mutual loneliness and friendship quickly blossoms into romance. As they go public with their unexpected love, the mismatched pair begins to face the cruel reality of society’s judgment, incurring the wrath of friends and family. Fassbinder once lauded Sirk as “a man who loves human beings and doesn’t despise them as we do.” But in Fear Eats the Soul, we see that Fassbinder, too, is capable of this.

Fassbinder favoured an aesthetic eclecticism that allowed him to experiment with contradictory genres, styles and cultural references — from social melodramas and comedies to science fiction and thrillers, psychological dramas and austere literary adaptations. His early films drew inspiration from the gangster films of the French New Wave and the methodologies of Bertolt Brecht and Antonin Artaud. During the 1970s, he was heavily influenced by the technicolour melodramas of Hollywood director Douglas Sirk. They imbued the mise en scène of his later works with lurid colours, artifice and plenty of histrionics, yet his use of melodrama was never for the sake of sarcasm: ‘I don’t believe that melodramatic feelings are laughable — they should be taken absolutely seriously’.⁴

For Fassbinder, there were no taboo subjects in cinema, just taboo means of representing them and his films often deal with challenging subjects, including the terrorism of the Baader- Meinhof group and the politics of postwar Germany; the alienated experiences of women and homosexuals; as well as the plight of migrants, interracial couples and the socially downtrodden. The key trajectory through these stories is the interplay of cruelty, exploitation and victimhood, where distinctions between the oppressed and the oppressors are not clear or simple. For Fassbinder, the reworking and remaking of this thematic was the very basis of his practice:

Every decent director has only one subject, and finally only makes the same film over and over again. My subject is the exploitability of feelings, whoever might be the one exploiting them. It never ends. It’s a permanent theme. Whether the state exploits patriotism, or whether in a couple relationship, one partner destroys the other.⁵

Berlin Alexanderplatz

Fassbinder first read Alfred Döblin’s modernist novel Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929) at 14, claiming it got him through a “murderous puberty.” Two decades later he realised his dream of adapting it, in the form of a 14-part miniseries for West German television. The result is Fassbinder’s magnum opus, an immersive epic chronicling the downfall of an ex-con during the declining days of the Weimar Republic. When Franz Biberkopf (Günter Lamprecht) is released from prison after killing his lover in a fit of passion, he is determined to “become an honest soul.” But as he struggles to find work and his sinister best friend Reinhold (Gottfried John) reappears to wreak havoc, Biberkopf finds himself slipping back into the underworld. As the tide of Nazism rises, the inescapable poverty, crime, and violence on the streets of Berlin sets Biberkopf’s descent into motion, reaching a fever pitch in a two-hour epilogue of phantasmagoria.

Alfred Döblin’s celebrated Weimar Republic novel Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929) was a major influence for Fassbinder, which he later adapted into a cult television series. He argued that reading the text as an adolescent had enabled him to avoid becoming ‘completely and utterly sick, dishonest and desperate’ like other Germans.⁶ Further literary adaptions include Vladimir Nabokov’s Despair (1934), about a man who undertakes the perfect crime — his own murder; Theodor Fontane’s realist novel Effi Briest (1894), about a woman trapped by marriage and social conventions; and Jean Genet’s Querelle of Brest (1947), which evoked an erotic underworld of sailors and hustlers. In these texts, Fassbinder found exiles, outcasts and strangers — characters that inhabited a world filled with prejudice and injustice. Never one to be overly sentimental, Fassbinder allowed these characters to be openly troubled as a way of confronting audiences with their fears — a fear of others and a fear of the self.

Fassbinder maintained an intense working relationship with a recurring cast of actors and technicians, which often spilt over into dysfunctional and intimate relations off set. As actor Harry Baer recalls, ‘It was totally insane. We didn’t need any speed in those days. All we needed was a dose of Fassbinder’.⁷ He was accused of treating those around him as marionettes, and his combative personality and directorial style caused him to be estranged from some of his principal collaborators. Yet this group formed something of a surrogate family, and it is this working process that fed Fassbinder’s relentless drive and output. His films bear a signature style and continuity through the work of cinematographer Michael Ballhaus, production designer Kurt Rabb, editor Juliane Lorenz, musician Peer Raben, and the luminous presence of stars, like Hanna Schygulla and Irm Hermann, who appear throughout Fassbinder’s filmography.

The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant

Once again mining his personal life for material, Fassbinder based The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant on his volcanic love affair with muse Günther Kaufmann. In an arch bit of gender reversal, the film stars Margit Carstensen as the stand-in for Fassbinder. She plays the titular character, a haughty and caustic fashion designer who is catered to ceaselessly by her subservient live-in assistant (Irm Hermann). Petra seems to enjoy wielding a sadistic control over her silent factotum. But when an aspiring model (Hanna Schygulla) captures Petra’s affections, power dynamics begin to shift. As Petra’s obsession deepens, so begins a slow, inevitable dissolution of her fraught relationships. Though adapted from Fassbinder’s own play and essentially a chamber piece, The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant is made thoroughly cinematic through Michael Ballhaus’s claustrophobic camerawork and the sparse but eye-popping art direction by Kurt Raab (one wall of Petra’s apartment is covered entirely by a giant blow-up of Nicolas Poussin’s 1624 painting Midas and Bacchus).

World on a Wire

Shot while on hiatus from the lengthy production of Effi Briest, the visionary World on a Wire is a two-part dystopian epic made for German television, and Fassbinder’s single foray into science-fiction. Anticipating anxieties around virtual reality, it centres on a computer program that simulates an artificial world, created by the Institute for Cybernetics and Future Science. When the scientist responsible for the program goes mad and mysteriously dies, the Institute asks engineer Fred Stiller (Klaus Löwitsch) to take his place. As people and even memories begin to inexplicably vanish, Stiller reluctantly goes in search of answers. The film spirals into a paranoid fever pitch, with the unravelling of a massive corporate conspiracy and the deterioration of Stiller’s own sense of what is real and what is a simulation. Evoking the dark, labyrinthine twists of film noirs like Howard Hawk’s The Big Sleep, World on a Wire also directly recalls Godard’s own sci-fi noir Alphaville in the sleek architecture and design of its modern Paris setting.

Along with greater access to his work through film restorations, there is currently a resurgence of interest in Fassbinder’s seminal theatre works and film retrospectives. His oeuvre has inspired generations of contemporary artists, including Ming Wong, Runa Islam, Rikrit Tiravanija, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, and filmmakers such as Pedro Almodóvar, Todd Haynes and Christoph Schlingensief.

While Fassbinder never lived to see German society change after the country’s reunification in 1990, the social conditions he railed against persist today. As a conservative political establishment sweeps across Western Europe, it’s unsurprising that his works are being reconsidered and championed by new audiences.

Endnotes
¹ This quote is widely attributed to Fassbinder.
² Fassbinder’s proclamation on the film poster for Die Dritte Generation (The Third Generation) 1979. The ‘New German Cinema’ was a pledge by filmmakers during the late 1960s and 70s to create challenging works for postwar Germany. Alongside Fassbinder, this disparate group included directors such as Margarethe von Trotta, Volker Schlöndorff, Wim Wenders, Werner Herzog, Alexander Kluge and Hans-Jürgen Syberberg.
³ Fassbinder discussing George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) in Robert Katz and Peter Berling’s Love is Colder than Death: The Life and Times of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Jonathan Cape, London, 1987, p.166.
⁴ Fassbinder, cited in Wallace Steadman Watson, Understanding Rainer Werner Fassbinder: Film as Private and Public Art, University of South Carolina Press, 1996, p.107.
⁵ Fassbinder, cited in Thomas Elsaesser, Fassbinder’s Germany: History, Identity, Subject, Amsterdam University Press, Holland, 1996, p.352.
⁶ Fassbinder cited in Wallace Steadman Watson, p.234.
⁷ Harry Baer, cited in Michael Koresky, ‘Early Fassbinder’, Eclipse Series 39: Early Fassbinder, The Criterion Collection, 2013.

Curious to know WHAT ELSE IS screening at the australian Cinémathèque?

José Da Silva is Curatorial Manager, Australian Cinémathèque, QAGOMA
Feature image: Production still from Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant (The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant) 1972

Beyond the Fire: Twin Peaks and a girl without a secret

Posted by José Da Silva ● 8 Apr 2015

There are so many clues and feelings in the world that it makes a mystery . . . and there are many avenues in life where we’re given little indications that the mystery can one day be solved. We get little proofs — not the big proof — but little proofs that keep us searching. – David Lynch

Today, 8 April marks the 25^th anniversary of David Lynch and Mark Frost’s television series Twin Peaks 1990–91. This ground-breaking vision of small town America revelled in a beauty and horror that lay beneath the surface of the everyday. It was part melodrama and murder mystery, and its success and longevity is a salient marker of our collective fascination with mysteries. As Lynch puts it, “Human beings are like detectives. We sense a mystery and we want to know what’s going on.”

That gum you like is going to come back in style!

As part of ‘David Lynch: Between Two Worlds‘, the Gallery is celebrating the anniversary of Twin Peaks with a number of events, starting with a free screening of the Lynch’s pilot episode Northwest Passage this Friday 10 April. Next week there are two sold out concerts by US band Xiu Xiu reinterpreting the music of Twin Peaks composed by Angelo Badalamenti and Lynch, a Twin Peaks Trivia Night hosted by Man vs Bear Trivia and screenings of Lynch’s terrifying prequel film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.

It is happening again!

‘Between Two Worlds’ also includes a gallery-based presentation of the Log Lady Introductions, written and directed by Lynch to accompany syndication of the series in 1993. One of the show’s more enigmatic figures, the Log Lady communicated with a place ‘beyond the fire’ through her log and is presented in the Gallery in a setting reminiscent of the interior of The Black Lodge, a location in Twin Peaks described as a ‘place between two worlds’, where characters meet their shadow-selves.

In the penultimate episode Laura Palmer tells Agent Cooper who is trapped in The Black Lodge, ‘I’ll see you again in 25 Years’ – a promise that has swelled with fans since the announcement that Lynch, Frost and the Showtime network would revisit the town with a 9-episode third series to be directed by Lynch. A new novel by Frost called ‘The Secret Lives of Twin Peaks’ (2015) was also announced with the promise that it would reveal what happened to the show’s characters in the intervening years.

But like the song goes: who knows where or when?

During Lynch’s visit to Brisbane for the opening of ‘Between Two Worlds’ he intimated that while he was still very much in love with the world of Twin Peaks, negotiations with the network were proving difficult and contracts were yet to be signed. Lynch’s reservation and clear frustration with the process drew speculation internationally that the new series might never eventuate. Those fears were fuelled by Lynch’s recent announcement on Twitter that he was leaving the production, lamenting that he wished things could have worked out differently.

Fans and actors have since begun the campaign to save the production with Lynch and Frost at the helm. The message is simple: No Lynch, No Peaks. In Sheryl Lee’s video message she described the endgame as “Twin Peaks without David Lynch is like a girl without a secret”. It’s a reminder of the commitment of fans worldwide who previously campaigned for 20 years for the release of deleted scenes from Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me that surfaced with the 2014 release of The Missing Pieces.

‘David Lynch: Between Two Worlds’ is at the Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane until 7 June 2015. A range of ticket packages and a complete retrospective of Lynch’s films, videos and works for television are presented as part of the exhibition in the Gallery’s Australian Cinémathèque.

David Lynch Working Notes: A place both wonderful and strange

Posted by José Da Silva ● 27 Feb 2015

blog-Laura — David Lynch / *Twin Peaks* 1990-91 (production still) / Image courtesy: ABC, Los Angeles

In the lead up to the opening of ‘David Lynch: Between Two Worlds’ on March 14, QAGOMA Senior Curator José Da Silva explores the process of developing the exhibition and its expanded program of events, screenings and performances.

I learned that just beneath the surface there’s another world, and still different worlds as you dig deeper. – David Lynch

I was 11 when Twin Peaks 1990–91 first aired on Australian television and I instantly fell in love with the idea of a world hidden with deeper truths. I was gripped particularly by the mythology of The Black Lodge and the location of Glastonberry Grove, where a circle of Sycamore trees and a pool of scorched engine oil marked a gateway between this world and its darker counterpart. When I arrived in Los Angeles last summer to visit Lynch’s studio, I made an impromptu detour out to the shooting location for Glastonberry Grove. With screen captures from the series and Google map in hand, I lined up the surrounding trees and stood at the ingress 25 years later.

blog-Glastonberry Grove — David Lynch / *Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me* 1992 (still) / Image courtesy: Madman Entertainment, Melbourne

blog-Los Angeles 2014 — Glastonberry Grove site visit, Los Angeles, July 2014 / Photograph: Laura Brown

Now this might look like a strange bit of field research – which of course it is – but it also represents an enthusiasm that underscores my entire approach to curating this project. ‘Between Two Worlds’ wasn’t born of intellectual curiosity, but from a deep love of mysteries. It’s an exhibition about the transcendent power of the imagination and about an artist who loves a mystery, particularly one that leaves room to dream. Not surprisingly, the title comes from the poem Lynch wrote during the production of the Twin Peaks pilot that sums up the idea of crossing the limits of the ordinary world: ‘Through the darkness of future past / The magician longs to see / One chants out between two worlds / Fire walk with me’.

blog-Untitled — David Lynch / *Untitled* 2007 / Installation after a drawing by David Lynch / Collection: Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris / Photograph: Patrick Gries / Image courtesy: Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain

When I imagined this exhibition, it began with a sense that it might indeed be possible to traverse the limits of the natural world – to chant out between worlds to a place both familiar and strange. Upon entering the finished exhibition, audiences will get such a chance, encountering a small drawing from the mid-1970s that illustrates the threshold of a living room. The gallery space then opens up to reveal Untitled 2007, an extraordinary installation that recreates the drawing as a théatre décor, enabling viewers to literally walk in and through its limits.

008 a — David Lynch / *Shadow of a Twisted Hand Across My House* 1988 / Oil and mixed media on canvas / Image courtesy: The artist and Galerie Karl Pfefferle, Munich / © The artist

Growing up in the Pacific Northwest during the 1950s, Lynch’s world seemed idyllic. It was what lay beneath the surface of that perfection that would consume him and form the basis of his artistic preoccupations. As Lynch describes:

My childhood was elegant homes, tree-lined streets, the milkman, building backyard forts, droning airplanes, blue skies, picket fences, green grass, cherry trees. Middle America as it’s supposed to be. But on the cherry tree there’s this pitch oozing out – some black, some yellow, and millions of red ants crawling all over it. I discovered that if one looks a little closer at this beautiful world, there are always red ants underneath. Because I grew up in a perfect world, other things were a contrast.

It was in the city of Philadelphia that Lynch would confront those red ants. The city’s atmosphere of violence, corruption and sadness left an indelible impression and gave him a certain way of seeing the world differently. Lynch recalls, ‘The feeling was so close to extreme danger, and the fear was intense… I saw things that were frightening, but more than that, thrilling.’

http://youtu.be/zMZOgev1ErU

David Lynch / Six Men Getting Sick (Six Times) 1967 / 16mm transferred to SD video, colour, stereo, 4 minutes / Image courtesy: The artist and MK2 / © The artist

Lynch’s practice took form at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts where he experimented with an expanded field of painting and sculpture. His desire to see a ‘moving painting’ encouraged him to experiment with proto-forms of animation and make Six Men Getting Sick 1967. This defining work saw Lynch make the leap from still to moving images, using a resin screen with sculptural reliefs as a surface, he projected hand-drawn sequences of vomiting, creating – an endless cycle of sickness accompanied by the sound of siren.

this man 1m — David Lynch / *This Man Was Shot 0.9502 Seconds Ago* 2004 / Mixed media on giclée print / Image courtesy: The artist / © The artist

Lynch’s approach to painting reflects this prescient example of action and reaction, fast and slow, as well as the organic and visceral possibilities of the painterly surface that he found inspiring in the work Francis Bacon. For Lynch, everything begins with his love of painting, and it is this activity that best represents the creative continuum: ‘You could paint forever and never paint the perfect painting and fall in love with a new thing every week and there’s no end to it, your painting is never going to die.’

blog-Eraserhead — David Lynch / *Eraserhead* 1977 (production still) / Image courtesy: Umbrella Entertainment, Melbourne

At the centre of ‘Between Two Worlds’ is the idea that wisdom is gained through knowledge and experience of combined opposites. For Lynch, ‘the world we live in is a world of opposites. And to reconcile those two opposing things is the trick.’ The exhibition in turn explores the expression of these dualities throughout his practice and the search for the balancing points between them.

Shifting between the macroscopic and microscopic, the physical and the psychic, the exhibition reveals many of Lynch’s enduring subjects: industry and organic phenomena, inner conflict and bodily trauma, the interplay of light and darkness, violence and grotesque humour, life’s absurdities, and the possibility of finding a deeper reality in our everyday experience. Ultimately, it reflects Lynch’s instinctive impulses to look beneath the surface of things, to not only find moments of beauty or horror, but to also uncover deeper truths — the mysteries and possibilities that ensure the ordinary is always something more.

Which brings me back to Twin Peaks and Agent Dale Cooper who perhaps knew best what we might just discover: ‘I have no idea where this will lead us. But I have a definite feeling it will be a place both wonderful and strange.

The publication David Lynch: Between Two Worlds includes over 200 images illustrating Lynch’s wide-ranging oeuvre — drawing, painting, printmaking, photography, mixed media, film and video — and an engaging interview with the artist, conducted by exhibition curator José Da Silva, Senior Curator, Australian Cinémathèque

David Lynch Working Notes: There’s always music in the air

Your Nostalgia is Killing Me!

Posted by José Da Silva ● 26 Nov 2014

BLOG-Fig Trees — *Fig Trees* is an experimental opera about the struggles of activists Tim McCaskell and Zackie Achmat, as they fight for access to HIV drugs for all.

Presented in the lead up to World AIDS Day on 1 December is ‘Your Nostalgia is Killing Me!’, a program of contemporary film and video that reflects on AIDS cultural activism.

‘Your Nostalgia is Killing Me!’ marks three decades of artistic responses to HIV/AIDS, and highlights the intersection of art and activism in film and video relating to the epidemic. It brings together works that illustrate some of the critical positions linked with AIDS cultural activism — from the documentation of individual and collective trauma during the late 1980s and early 1990s, to rethinking issues of memory and representation in the contemporary setting.

The program takes place at an important moment in terms of AIDS visibility and cultural production. Since the mid-1990s, HIV has been recognised as a manageable illness, a shift in understanding that has been linked to a decline in the production of works dealing with the present-day experience of people living with HIV. Yet at the same time a form of nostalgia has led to a renewed recognition of AIDS in contemporary media, with the success of biographical films and documentaries revisiting the early days of the epidemic and the origins of the AIDS activist movement in the United States.

The program’s title is borrowed from the poster/VIRUS project by Canadian artist Vincent Chevalier and activist–academic Ian Bradley-Perrin, which asks us to rethink the cultural responses that have been canonised as part of the AIDS narrative. As writer Ted Kerr has described, the poster was an articulation that “their current life chances as people living with HIV were being reduced by a focus on AIDS of the past. The stigma, health, and social realities that they experience were being ignored in lieu of a look back.” Chevalier and Bradley-Perrin’s phrase is used here to incite a rethinking of the visual character of AIDS more generally, shifting the emphasis from gay men’s healthcare in the northern hemisphere to other histories and conversations taking place throughout the global south, where artists and filmmakers are responding to local issues of stigma, visibility and medical treatment.

‘Your Nostalgia is Killing Me!’ screens at GOMA until 1 December 2014. It is presented in the lead up to World AIDS Day and is accompanied by introductions and talks with artists and filmmakers.

The Gallery’s Australian Cinémathèque acknowledges all the filmmakers, estates, archives and distributors who have generously provided screening materials for this program.

Derek Jarman’s Cinema Of Small Gestures

Posted by José Da Silva ● 2 Apr 2014

4.2.7 — *Portrait of Derek Jarman* / Photograph: Steve Pyke / Image courtesy: British Film Institute

Opening this week is the landmark film program ‘The Last of England: Thatcherism and British Cinema’. The free program begins with a special 20th anniversary retrospective of films by the acclaimed artist and filmmaker Derek Jarman. This major survey of British cinema continues at the Gallery’s Australian Cinémathèque, GOMA until the 25 June 2014.

We are all accomplices in the dream world of soul; it is not just personal, it’s general, we make these connections all the time. As Heraclitus said: ‘Those who dream are co-authors of what happens in the world’. Derek Jarman, Kicking The Pricks, 1996:108

Derek Jarman (1942–1994) is Britain’s most singular director and one of the most compelling artists to explore the moving image. In his short but expansive career, he completed 11 feature films that eschew conventional narrative and more than 60 Super-8 and 16mm montage films. His cinema tackled subjects of sexuality, history and politics without compromise and considered the creative process itself with a deeply affecting sensibility. In addition to his work in theatre and cinema, Jarman maintained his practice as a painter, wrote a series of memoirs and diaries, made music videos and was a passionate gardener. Twenty years after his death from AIDS-related conditions, his films, writing and paintings constitute more than ever, a vital statement against cultural conservatism and the will to be a self-determining artist.

02 72dpix570pbw — Production still from *The Last of England* 1988 / Director: Derek Jarman / Image courtesy: British Film Institute, Hollywood Classics

Jarman studied painting at Kings College London and at the Slade School of Art and saw filmmaking as another form of painting. He applied his skills and interest in theatre and architecture to his role as production designer for Ken Russell’s films The Devils 1971 and Savage Messiah 1972, as well the Royal Ballet’s production of Jazz Calendar 1968. These experiences alongside his interaction with London’s gay social milieu gave him the confidence to begin developing his own projects and some of the first truly independent British features. While his filmography attests to a strong personal vision, Jarman also valued the collaborative process over individual control. Throughout his career he worked with a key group of creative collaborators, including producer James Mackay, actress Tilda Swinton, production designer Christopher Hobbs, composer Simon Fischer Turner and costume designer Sandy Powell.

03 72dpix570pxw — Production still from Caravaggio1986 / Director: Derek Jarman / Image courtesy: British Film Institute, Hanway Films

Working with limited resources from the late 1970s to early 1990s, Jarman developed a unique cinematographic practice that turned those restraints into a signature aesthetic – what he conceived as ‘a cinema of small gestures’. Jarman enjoyed the autonomy and portability of shooting with his Nizo 480 and Beaulieu Super-8 cameras and filmed at 3-6 frames per second (as opposed to the usual range of 16-24) to extend the duration of film stock. This made for a more economical shooting process as well as developing a visual language similar to stop-motion photography, wherein images appear suspended in time or flicker beyond comprehension. Jarman experimented with different approaches to re-filming the fragile Super-8 stock and with the aid of U-matic recording technology, developed film/video hybrids that celebrated a new vocabulary of ‘magic realism’ created with the effects of video compositing/superimpositions and editing, saturated colours, and an emphasis on the material quality of film and video stock.

04 72dpix570pxw — Production still from Blue 1993 / Director: Derek Jarman / Image courtesy: Basilisk Communications

After publically disclosing his status as HIV-positive in 1986, Jarman worked under the spectre of death, writing and directing with urgency. His work took on a political dimension, aimed at tackling the cultural reversals occurring in British society under Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government. While he would refer to himself as ‘small-c conservative’, desiring the age of Shakespeare to escape the plight of England, his strident politics were always on show and his artistic vision was nothing short of revolutionary. Jarman’s storytelling was anachronistic, connecting the historical and contemporary through costuming, staging and dialogue, and throughout his career he sought to connect aspects of his personal history with public history. Music journalist Jon Savage has commented that Jarman’s subversive statements about British society ‘gave both his life and work a sharpened focus’ and made him ‘a standard for those who every fibre revolted against the power politics of the early to mid-1980s.’

05 72dpix570pxw — Production still from Edward II / Director: Derek Jarman / Image courtesy: British Film Institute, The Works International

Never one to allow his personal and public life to diverge, Jarman was one of the few openly Queer filmmakers during his lifetime and was unapologetic about his quest to represent homosexuality onscreen. Taking cues from filmmakers Pier Paolo Pasolini and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, his films are dominated by stories of exiles and outsiders – from Saint Sebastian to William Shakespeare, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Benjamin Britten, Wilfred Owen, Christopher Marlow and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Jarman’s project was to re-mythologise the importance of these homosexual artists, writers and intellectuals within cultural history and make visible through his work a strong Queer sensibility within the history of British art and film. Driven by the knowledge that his time was limited, Jarman was also an outspoken activist and used his life and work to negate the stigma associated with living with HIV and rally against the threat of Section 28, the 1988 British law introduced by Thatcher’s government that legislated against the promotion of homosexuality. He died of bronchial pneumonia shortly after his 52nd birthday on February 19, 1994. Jarman’s parting words in his last memoir At Your Own Risk: A Saint’s Testament (1993) read:

I am tired tonight. My eyes are out of focus, my body droops under the weight of the day, but as I leave you Queer lads let me leave you singing. I had to write of sad time as a witness ― not to cloud your smiles ― please read the cares of the world that I have locked in these pages; and after, put this book aside and love. May you of a better future, love without care and remember we loved too. As the shadows closed in, the stars came out. I am in love.