Jarmans

11. The Angelic Conversation (1985)Judi Dench reads 14 Shakespeare sonnets over 77 minutes of homoerotic imagery, backed by compositions by Benjamin Britten and experimental band Coil in this romantic and dreamy film. While not as powerful as Jarman’s best queer works, which channelled anger as well as beauty in their rebellion against oppression, Dench’s readings and the woozy imagery work beautifully together.10. Jubilee (1978)Elizabeth I (Jenny Runacre) time travels to punk-era Britain and discovers a desperate,…

Neil Bartlett vividly remembers his first glimpse of Derek Jarman’s work: covertly watching the film Sebastiane (Latin dialogue, glistening flesh) on Channel 4 in 1985. “How I managed to do that without my mum and dad finding out,” he marvels. “I was captivated. That’s when Derek became public property – Mary Whitehouse and her cohorts were frothing at the mouth. And my young man’s cultural gaydar went: ‘Oh, what’s this?’”As a painter, writer and film-maker, Jarman was a unique figure in British culture: an icon of the…

Out on the shingled plains of Dungeness, Prospect Cottage is easily spotted: the black clapboard, the yellow paintwork, the John Donne lines written on the gable end. There is the garden, planted with sea kale and driftwood, and in the near distance, the nuclear power station, hulking and grey against the pale Kent sky. Today, as most days, there is also a smattering of visitors, hair wild and coats billowing, here to see the place where Derek Jarman spent the last years of his life.Jarman retreated to this unlikely…

In Sebastiane, Derek Jarman and Paul Humfress’ 1976 film, the soon-to-be-martyred Roman soldier is warned by his friend Justin to stop fighting against their pagan authorities. “The truth,” Sebastiane responds, “is beautiful”. As they speak, Justin tends to the wounds of the third-century saint in an act of love that has the potential to endanger both of them if they are caught by their tyrannical overseer or their fellow soldiers. This moment of intimacy is luxuriant; where there could be a palpable sense of terror,…