The sub­lime short films of Derek Jar­man, seen for the first time in decades

An avant-garde film­mak­er most known per­haps for his fea­tures Blue and Car­avag­gio, Derek Jar­man was one of the first British film­mak­ers to fea­ture pos­i­tive images of queer char­ac­ters in his work. He also famous­ly gave Til­da Swin­ton her first ever on-screen role, shot music videos for the likes of The Pet Shop Boys and The Smiths and even con­vinced Lau­rence Olivi­er to come out of retire­ment to star in his film War Requiem, which would ulti­mate­ly be his last film appear­ance before his death. Through­out his life, Jar­man remained an out­spo­ken gay rights activist and fear­less­ly por­trayed queer love and gay sex with emphat­ic joy, despite the back­drop of Tha­ter­ism. Ulti­mate­ly, Jar­man tru­ly left his mark on the film indus­try, before his untime­ly death at 54 of an AIDS-relat­ed illness.

But Jarman’s lega­cy lives on, through the work of Cre­ative Folk­stone at Jarman’s for­mer res­i­dence Prospect Cot­tage and the Jar­man Award, as well as efforts by the LUMA Foun­da­tion and James Mack­ay, a close friend of Jarman’s who was entrust­ed with sev­er­al of his Super 8 films before his death. Thanks to LUMA, Mack­ay and Anoth­er Man, a selec­tion of restored short films (some of which have nev­er been seen by the pub­lic before after being in stor­age for the past 30 years after his death) played at London’s ICA this month, mean­ing audi­ences had a chance to recon­nect with Jarman’s incred­i­ble work.

The pro­gramme began with a few words by James Mack­ay, who recalls ​“I’ve been work­ing for the last ten years on restor­ing and con­serv­ing the Super 8 films that Derek made in the ear­ly sev­en­ties […] The Super 8 films were made when Derek was gift­ed the loan of a Braun Nizo Super 8 cam­era in 1972 by a guy called Marc Balet who went on to be the design­er for Andy Warhol’s Inter­view Mag­a­zine in New York. Super 8 cam­eras weren’t that com­mon, they’d been around for a few years but they weren’t that com­mon at the time.

Derek came from a fam­i­ly of ama­teur film­mak­ers, his father and grand­fa­ther were both keen 16mm film­mak­ers, Derek nev­er real­ly had access to that equip­ment and his only expe­ri­ence of film­mak­ing was design­ing The Dev­ils for Ken Rus­sell, which is a big indus­tri­al, beau­ti­ful film. When he was giv­en the loan of this cam­era he found that he could actu­al­ly shoot film, doing the cam­er­a­work every­thing him­self […] He just embraced it and in the peri­od between 1972 and just when he made Sebas­tiane, at the end of 1974, he pro­duced some­thing like 42 short films which he shot and edit­ed him­self, so it was a very pro­lif­ic peri­od for him and he moved dur­ing that peri­od almost com­plete­ly from paint­ing to filmmaking.”

The pro­gramme includes nine short films, the first of which is not actu­al­ly direct­ed by Jar­man, but by his close friend Julian Cole, a stu­dent at the Roy­al Col­lege of Art in the 1980s who – like Jar­man – had a great inter­est in the con­tro­ver­sial film­mak­er Pier Pao­lo Pasoli­ni. Mack­ay notes how Cole had ​“asked Derek if he would play the role of Pasoli­ni in a film. Derek was quite a, you know, charis­mat­ic, good-look­ing man so I sort of thought it would be nice to start with some­thing of Derek in his prime before going into the Super 8 films.”

The film, Ostia, is a 26-minute med­i­ta­tion on sex­u­al­i­ty, con­sumerism and iden­ti­ty, all set against the back­drop of Pasolini’s infa­mous death in which the film­mak­er, poet and mae­stro of Ital­ian cin­e­ma was mur­dered by a young male sex work­er on a beach in Ostia. Cole’s film recalls these same events but is set in work­ing-class Eng­land rather than the sun-soaked coast near Italy’s cap­i­tal. Jar­man here shines as the charm­ing intel­lec­tu­al, weighed down by his own nihilism and a fright­en­ing abil­i­ty to clear­ly see a future col­laps­ing in on itself due to the evils of glob­al capitalism.

After Cole’s film, the series of Jarman’s eight shorts began. The first, Stu­dio Bank­side, is much like the lat­er shown Sloane Square, which observes Jarman’s dai­ly life with a ten­der, nos­tal­gic eye. Stu­dio Bank­side turns the messy haven of Jarman’s stu­dio into a kinet­ic short film, Jarman’s Blonde on Blonde Bob Dylan poster, dying plants, his view of the Thames and dirty paint­brush­es all filmed with a pen­sive eye, express­ing the beau­ty of the mun­dane. Sloane Square is much the same, except Jar­man swaps his stu­dio for an apart­ment filled with friends and fel­low artists. They move through the film in a high-speed time lapse, smok­ing, sit­ting on the phone, and laugh­ing with one anoth­er, all punc­tu­at­ed by a hand­ful of shots of Jar­man look­ing at him­self through the cam­era lens in a mir­ror. It’s a por­trait of every­day beau­ty and friendship.

The pro­gramme also con­tains more psy­che­del­ic, expres­sion­is­tic pieces which could hap­pi­ly sit along­side sur­re­al­ist mas­ter­pieces such as Un Chien Andalou. Jarman’s Tarot and Sul­phur are hazy, hyp­not­ic shorts with strange imagery of char­ac­ters eat­ing pearl neck­laces, col­laps­ing into fire, danc­ing like mimes, all sound­tracked by a prac­ti­cal­ly psy­che­del­ic score.

Mack­ay notes regard­ing the film’s scores ​“Derek, when he pre­sent­ed the films him­self, would play com­mer­cial music from records and cas­sette tapes. It could vary from William Wal­ton, Tan­ger­ine Dream, Nico, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks – you know a very wide eclec­tic selec­tion of music which he would choose to accom­pa­ny each film. The prob­lem of clear­ing lots of com­mer­cial music is just too expen­sive so what we decid­ed to do when Derek was still alive was to ask friends to make music for the films.” Mack­ay recalls how Sloane Square, for instance, ​“has a sound­track by Simon Fish­er Turn­er who then went on to score Derek’s fea­ture films like Car­avag­gio, The Last of Eng­land and Blue” and In The Shad­ow of the Sun (a short not shown at the screen­ings) ​“was sound­tracked by Throb­bing Gristle.”

Jarman’s Jour­ney to Ave­bury, mean­while, is arguably the most beau­ti­ful of the col­lec­tion, a sun­set-lit voy­age through Britain’s pre­his­toric coun­try­side, which, in its slow pace, forces the spec­ta­tor to tru­ly con­sid­er the tec­ton­ic beau­ty of nature. The sheer vari­ety of the shorts demon­strates Jarman’s ver­sa­til­i­ty as a film­mak­er and in being restored and shown to the pub­lic for the film time, we are final­ly able to tru­ly wit­ness and remem­ber Jarman’s bound­less cre­ativ­i­ty, pas­sion and dynamism as one of England’s great­est filmmakers.