DEREK is a unique collaboration between Isaac Julien and Tilda Swinton, in which British artist and filmmaker Derek Jarman is remembered and celebrated. The new film will combine document with fiction, and experiment with narrative to produce an enthralling work of art about Derek Jarman. It will be a timely reappraisal and celebration of the work of one of Britain’s most important artist filmmakers, and is intended to inform and inspire at a time when the pioneering work of a number of key figures of the 1970s and 1980s is becoming a significant influence to a new generation.
From Sebastiane (1976) to Blue (1992), Derek Jarman’s films constantly interrogated time and art, and epitomized his own era. He was a painter, part of the moment that made sixties London a capital of the art world. He was a filmmaker, perhaps the single most crucial figure of British independent cinema through the seventies, eighties and nineties. He lived as a gay man surfing the joys of Gay Liberation and the sorrows of Aids. He lived as a participant observer, noting with pen or camera all that passed before him - from punk to Thatcher, from Hampstead Heath to film premiere.
Now those images will serve to place his art in his time, to produce a fascinating history that we can put to use. As well as the feature films and Super 8 films, which span three decades, there are the extensive video clips he recorded from the early seventies, for artists from the Smiths to the Pet Shop Boys, and from television to film festivals in Japan, Berlin and Cologne. There are also images of Derek, as he erupted into the viewfinder of the news media. This unique perspective will provide a counterpoint, as his own images are juxtaposed with the images of the history that generated them.
Director: Isaac Julien
Executive Producers: Tilda Swinton, James MacKay
Producers: Colin MacCabe, Eliza Mellor
