Movies: Derek Jarman

A retelling of the life of the celebrated 17th-century Baroque painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio through his brilliant, nearly blasphemous paintings and his flirtations with the underworld....

In 17th-century France, Father Urbain Grandier seeks to protect the city of Loudun from the corrupt establishment of Cardinal Richelieu. Hysteria occurs within the city when he is accused of witchcraft by the sexually repressed Sister Jeanne....

When the young, attractive Joe Orton meets the older, more introverted Kenneth Halliwell at drama school, he befriends the kindred spirit and they start an affair. As Orton becomes more comfortable with his sexuality and starts to find success with h...

The Angelic Conversation is a lyrical, haunting film about a young man’s search for love in a dreamlike landscape. Its tone is set by the juxtaposition of slow moving homo-erotic images and opaque landscapes through which two men take a journey into...

Prospero, a potent magician, lives on a desolate isle with his virginal daughter, Miranda. He's in exile, banished from his duchy by his usurping brother and the King of Naples. Providence brings these enemies near; aided by his vassal the spirit Ari...

Rome, AD 303. Emperor Diocletian demotes his favourite, Sebastian, from captain of the palace guard to the rank of common soldier and banishes him to a remote coastal outpost where his fellow soldiers, weakened by their desires, turn to homosexual ac...

England, 14th century. King Edward II falls in love with Piers Gaveston, a young man of humble origins, whom he honors with favors and titles of nobility. The cold and jealous Queen Isabella conspires with the evil Mortimer to get rid of Gaveston, ov...

Against a plain, unchanging blue screen, a densely interwoven soundtrack of voices, sound effects and music attempt to convey a portrait of Derek Jarman's experiences with AIDS, both literally and allegorically, together with an exploration of the me...

Ten short pieces directed by ten different directors, including Ken Russell, Jean-Luc Godard, Robert Altman, Bruce Beresford, and Nicolas Roeg. Each short uses an aria as soundtrack/sound, and is an interpretation of the particular aria....

A dramatization, in modern theatrical style, of the life and thought of the Viennese-born, Cambridge-educated philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose principal interest was the nature and limits of language. A series of sketches depict the unfolding o...

The artist's personal commentary on the decline of his country in a language closer to poetry than prose. A dark meditation on London under Thatcher....

During World War I, British soldier Owen is mortified by the examples of cruelty that surround him in the trenches. He combats these terrifying images by maintaining hope in his love for an army nurse. But he also begins to accept his fate as another...

Queen Elizabeth I visits late 1970s England to find a depressing landscape where life has changed since her time....

A nearly wordless visual narrative intercuts two main stories and a couple of minor ones. A woman, perhaps the Madonna, brings forth her baby to a crowd of intrusive paparazzi; she tries to flee them. Two men who are lovers marry and are arrested by ...

Ostia is a fascinating short film directed by Julian Cole and produced for the Royal College of Art, which reconstructs the events leading up to the murder of Pier Paolo Pasolini. Ostia relocates the proceedings to London and stars Derek Jarman as Pa...

In the Paris of the 1910s, brash young sculptor Henri Gaudier begins a creative partnership with an older writer, Sophie Brzeska. Though the couple is 20 years apart in age, Gaudier finds that his untamed work is complemented by the older woman's cul...

A collage of Derek Jarman's super 8 footage spanning over 20 years....

Cinématon is a 156-hour long experimental film by French director Gérard Courant. It was the longest film ever released until 2011. Composed over 36 years from 1978 until 2006, it consists of a series of over 2,821 silent vignettes (cinématons), each...

This film was shot on Super-8 by Derek Jarman in 1977 and is considered to be the inspiration for Jubilee. Jarman often showed his films silent or with different musical accompaniment - one of Jarman's suggestions was Brahms' "Violin Concerto."...

In 70s Great Britain, a gay teacher is forced to hide his sexuality by day while living his secret life by night....