Gay Film Fest: Derek Jarman: Life as Art June 20, 2006

Repressive postwar England was not the ideal place for a boy with an unbridled imagination to come of age. Nor was London in the '60s a warm and welcoming milieu for a gay man. Yet Derek Jarman wasn't bullied by his environment so much as inspired by it. Sure of his talent and energized by his outsider status, Jarman made bracingly original films that waged full-frontal war on conformity, narrow-mindedness and ugliness.

Director Andy Kimpton-Nye eschews an exhaustive analysis of Jarman's life and oeuvre (which could never fit into sixty minutes, anyway) to proffer a breezy survey of the director's childhood and a joyful appreciation of his career. In lieu of Jarman's own words, we are treated to the witty and insightful reminiscences of collaborators including actors Tilda Swinton and Nigel Terry and producer James MacKay.

Their droll recollections, alongside glimpses of such landmark Jarman films as Sebastiane (1976), Caravaggio (1986) and The Last of England (1987), comprise a vivid portrait of the artist as experimentalist and smiling provocateur. One of cinema's great radicals, Jarman transmuted his sexual and political concerns into fabulous art. His contribution was not limited to the screen, however; Jarman made his AIDS diagnosis public in 1986, galvanizing Thatcher's England.

The program will conclude with Jarman's 1984 short film, Imagining October.

Official Website: http://www.frameline.org/festival/30th/filmsevents.html