Derek Jarman - Moving Pictures of a Painter

The English painter, film-maker and writer Derek Jarman (1942-1994) is mainly knownfor his work in the medium of film, but he always saw himself primarily as a painter.In this study of his lesser known home movies, Super 8 films and the 'cinema of smallgestures' that Jarman developed out of them, Martin Frey discusses numerous Super 8films as well as the films THE LAST OF ENGLAND, IN THE SHADOW OF THE SUN andTHE ANGELIC CONVERSATION. He examines Jarman's filming techniques and way ofworking and also analyses influences from the fields of painting and literature, such asAllen Ginsberg, Robert Rauschenberg, David Hockney and Yves Klein.For Jarman, life and work represented an indivisible unity. Numerous autobiographicalelements from his works are thus considered in this volume: his repressed childhood andadolescence in post-war England, his coming out and the liberated life of the seventies,his struggle against the unequal treatment of homosexuals during the Thatcher area, hisdealing with his own HIV infection and finally his personal commitment to fightingdiscrimination against people who are HIV-positive or who have already developed Aids.