"We are all accomplices in the dream world of the soul."
—Derek Jarman, Kicking the Pricks
Derek Jarman was a filmmaker, set designer, gardener, writer, and activist. But to list off items of Jarman’s biography in such a manner does not come close to being able to comprehend the magnitude of his singular artistry. Over the course of his life Jarman created a visual language of love, politics, and poetry through moving images.
I recall the memory well, picking up a copy of Projections (Derek Jarman's Films From The Pet Shop Boys' First Tour), an Artificial Eye VHS tape that I found as a teenager in a charity shop in my small coastal hometown. The case stood out instantly. It became a piece of a puzzle that awakened within me the possibilities of film as an artform that could expand narrative—that film was also a visual representation of musicality and feeling. In the movie, Jarman’s music video work is projected for the Pet Shop Boys tour alongside his films Garden of Luxor (1972) and Studio Bankside (1971). My awareness of what film could be and do was felt watching these video experimentations and subsquently by exploring Jarman’s endless network of collaborators, from early muse and dear friend Tilda Swinton to Genesis P-Orridge, Miranda Sex Garden, The Smiths, and Simon Fisher Turner (of The The, and one of the great contemporary film composers and musicians).
Jarman’s films were melodic, with sound design and score amplifying feeling. Longtime collaborators such as Coil and Psychic TV blend in among music video moments for the likes of Wang Chung’s “Dance Hall Days.” In the first, early version of the song's music video, Jarman used a collection of home movies with the majority of the archive footage consisting of a stage show with swimmers and fountains along with other World War II-era material. The footage is courtesy of the director's father, who was one of the first people to use a color home movie camera (the toddler in the home movie footage is the director himself). The home movie aesthetic stayed with Jarman throughout his career; even when he went on to make impressive features such as Caravaggio (1986) and Wittengenstein (1993) he would also be rolling his Super 8 camera, a life of collage transposed on screen.
In his artistic sound design, we hear the whispers of the drudgery of Thatcher’s United Kingdom on the Smiths’ The Queen Is Dead, for which Jarman directed a trio of films in 1986. A masterful editor, Jarman’s work was always heightened with sound design, for which he had a vivid sensibility. These long-format music videos were pioneering, other examples being his twelve-minute long visual suite for Marianne Faithfull, Broken English (1979), and Coil’s Journey to Avebury (1971), the latter included in this mix.
For anyone who has had the great joy of visiting Dungeness, along the coastline of Kent, Southern England, one is reminded of the detailed sound and music that accompanies Jarman’s work. In the apocalyptic desert landscape—truly there is nowhere else in the world like it—lives Prospect Cottage. As Mark Kermode mentioned during a campaign to save and restore the cottage, “In that space that meant so much to him, it's not just what he took from the space but what it took from him. The spirit exists in the landscape, in the building, in the plants…there’s something Freidkin refers to a lot as a moody God and if you’re going to believe it about anywhere, you’re going to believe it about the cottage.” The Kent coastline comes alive through Jarman and his collaborators' use of the pebbles and skyline. Secrets, love, dreams, reality, trauma, disease, and fear are all enveloped into the waves breaking into Blue (1993), the magnum opus of Jarman’s world. As Jarman falls further into physical and mental decline through his battle with AIDS, his sacred martyrs follow us throughout the work: Caravaggio, St. Sebastian, and Jesus Christ. The film work based along the coastline of Dungeness is laced with the punk energy of collaborators such as Sandy Powell, Jordan (Pamela Rooke, actress, Vivienne Westwood muse and all-around icon, who died this last April), Malcolm McLaren, or the dew-drop dreams of a Rimbaud poem that take me to a shingle beach reminiscent of a Dylan Thomas short story.
For me, Blue is the shining star of everything, a haunting swan song made toward the end of Jarman’s struggle with HIV, in which we see a screen projection of an image of Yves Klein Blue emerging with sound design and poetry, thoughts and feelings. This beautiful tapestry weaves together Coil's John Balance and Simon Fisher Turner alongside the likes of Current 93, Vini Reilly of the Durutti Column, and Brian Eno. Fragments of sound design, spoken poetry, and instrumentals echo into our memory. Jarman sonically illustrates an inner world shaken by the finite nature of life; lovers lost and love forever more, the ripples of the ocean, the drudgery of a waiting room full of needles and junkies, disease taking over, voices of ancestors past—not a beat is skipped. We’re there with Jarman. It is an unforgettable and life-affirming experience.
In the words of Jarman’s dear friend Tilda Swinton, at a keynote speech at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in 2002:
This is what I miss, there being no more Derek Jarman films: the mess the vulgarity the cant the poetry the edge the pictures Simon Fisher Turner’s music the real faces the intellectualism the science the bad temperedness the good temperedness the cheek the standards the anarchy the gaucheness the romanticism the classicism the optimism the activism the challenge the longeurs the glee the playfulness the bumptiousness, the resistance the wit the fight the colours the grace the passion the goodness the beauty Longlivemess. Longlivepassion Longlivecompany. yr, Tilda
- Extract, The Garden, 00:00 (edit)
- Simon Fisher Turner, "Persistence of Memory," The Last of England, 08:40
- Psychic TV, "Ellipse Of Flowers," Theme for "Home Movies," a video journal by Derek Jarman, 10:40
- Derek Jarman & Coil, "Sweats In The Night Blue" 20:32
- The Smiths, "The Queen Is Dead (Take Me Back to Dear Old Blighty) (Medley)," 23:30
- Extract, The Garden (edit) 29:40
- Simon Fisher Turner, "Autumn Leaf," The Last of England, 32:35
- Derek Jarman, "Pearl Fishers In Azure Seas," 35:40
- Coil, "Part 3," Blue 38:56
- Simon Fisher Turner, "Let Me Forget Myself," Edward II, 46:10
- Coil, "Egyptian Basses," Coil: Egyptian Basses, 57:00
- Coil, "The Dead Sea," The Last of England, 61:15
- Extract, The Last of England (edit), 66:45
- Derek Jarman & Coil, "Impatient Youths of the Sun," Blue, 69:20
- Simon Fisher Turner, "Edward Pop," Edward II, 72:00
- Simon Fisher Turner, "Yer Highness," Edward II, 76:00
- Derek Jarman, "Ages and Aeons Quit the Room," Blue, 78:20
- Coil, "Journey to Avebury," Journey to Avebury, 80:00
- Wang Chung, "Dance Hall Days," 84:45
- Extract, Wittgenstein (edit), 87:55
- Harold Budd, "The Art of Mirrors (after Derek Jarman)," 92:42
- Simon Fisher Turner, "Every Time We Say Goodbye," Edward II, 98:10
- Coil, "Disco Death," The Last of England, 100:48
- Psychic TV, "Mylar Breeze," Sebastiane, 104:00
- Extract, Jubilee (edit), 109:20
- Throbbing Gristle, T.G.: Psychic Rally In Heaven, 111:00
- Extract, Jubilee (edit), 114:40