Why Derek Jarman’s radical queer films still matter today

“As long as the music’s loud enough we won’t hear the world fall apart.” It’s hard to know where to begin when describing the life and impact of filmmaker, author and activist Derek Jarman, who passed away twenty-five years ago this week, but this quote from 1978 film Jubilee – once described as “Britain’s only decent punk film” – seems as good a place as any. The film depicts a struggle between punks and royalty, between socialism and nationalism — all told through the lens of a time-travelling Queen Elizabeth I and a bunch of anarchists hellbent on smashing up London and reeking havoc on its derelict buildings. It’s political commentary, but it’s also sheer escapism – and that’s exactly what Jarman did best.

It’s no surprise that anarchy was a regular theme in Jarman’s oeuvre, particularly his early work. He was openly gay in an era which treated queers as pariahs; midway through his career he was diagnosed with HIV, a virus still shrouded by stigma despite medical advancements, for which his activism paved the way. Words like ‘bold’ and ‘fearless’ are overused but they’re the best descriptors of Jarman, who was radically, unapologetically queer.

This queerness informed his work, which often dragged classic tales kicking and screaming into Jarman’s world. He reimagined the life of martyr Saint Sebastian in Sebastiane, a 1976 film whose homoeroticism was met with controversy; refashioned Shakespeare’s The Tempest in a crumbling mansion with a cast of punks; when he finally got funding for Caravaggio in 1986 — recounting the life of the 17th-century painter — he created a world filled with sex workers, jealous mistresses and brutal murderers. These disruptive portrayals of classical icons shocked and incensed purists, but they also established Jarman’s reputation as one of the most brilliantly controversial film-makers of his time.

But Jarman was so much more than a filmmaker. Not only did he create groundbreaking queer representation within his work, he also rallied against Thatcher’s insidious Section 28 legislation, which essentially banned gay teachers from schools and intensified prejudice against them. Jarman was also vocal about the stigma he faced as an HIV+ person, which still exists today, although a combination of time and medical progress has eroded it slowly. As the years passed, his influence grew; by the late 1980s he was making music videos for The Smiths, Pet Shop Boys and Bob Geldof, whereas his friends and collaborators – Tilda Swinton and David Bowie amongst them – were becoming stars, raising Jarman’s profile in the process. He began compiling a multidisciplinary catalogue of work which spanned more than 400 paintings and sketches and a series of memoirs including the crushingly beautiful Modern Nature, a bittersweet ode to his garden over which his HIV diagnosis lingers heavily.

Jarman’s transformation not just as an artist, but as a person, can be charted through the timeline of his work. His earliest films were experimental, revolutionary in their depictions of queer themes and tinged with nihilism. They were political, driven by the sense of anarchy that galvanised Britain during Margaret Thatcher’s oppressive reign. These were the years during which Jarman – to recall the quote at the beginning of this piece – cranked up the volume, dancing through the flames of his own making. He was incendiary, eager to disrupt and driven by a desire to make the world a less hostile place, taking controversial measures to do so.

But as the years went on, Jarman became increasingly thoughtful, creating more poetic work. Modern Nature arguably best exemplifies this shift. Whereas a younger Jarman would have taken his HIV diagnosis as a catalyst for nihilism, he went the other way and instead began to nurture the plants in his garden. He dug, watered and planted to cultivate new life as his own slipped slowly away; he focussed on building a legacy as opposed to burning the world to the ground. This sense of stillness permeates his final film Blue, a narration of the AIDS-related decline in health which eventually claimed Jarman’s life in 1994. There was no visual distraction, only a blue square which flickered recurrently — initially an ode to Yves Klein which, ironically, became a representation of Jarman’s diminishing vision.

Attempts to preserve Jarman’s legacy seemed to become more deliberate as his career went on, and last year I saw their results in real-time as I joined a group of queer kids, artists and punks to watch Jubilee in a makeshift London cinema. Together we laughed, cried and cheered as the punks of Jarman’s world fucked up a system built to exclude them. We were inspired by their determination to dance through chaos; they instilled with us a desire to keep pushing, to keep screaming and taking up space in a world that wants to silence us. Like the plants that Jarman left in his beautiful, bittersweet garden, we continue to thrive and feel the benefits of his hardship long after his own life was cruelly cut short. The kinship in that room proved only one thing: that Jarman’s tireless attempts to cultivate his legacy had not been in vain.

Jarman Volume Two: 1987 – 1994, a 6-disc Limited Edition Blu-ray box set containing ‘The Last of England’, ‘War Requiem’, ‘The Garden’, ‘Edward II’, ‘Wittgenstein’, ‘Blue’ and ‘Glitterbug’, is released by the BFI on 25 February.