reviews_and_ramblings | Derek Jarman (January 31, 1942

Michael Derek Elworthy Jarman was an English film director, stage designer, diarist, artist, gardener and author.
Born: January 31, 1942, Northwood, London, United Kingdom
Died: February 19, 1994, London, United Kingdom
Education: Slade School of Fine Art
King's College London
Canford School
University College London
Lived: Prospect Cottage, Dungeness Rd, Romney Marsh TN29 9NE, UK (50.92251, 0.97607)
104 Charing Cross Road, WC2H
51 Upper Ground, SE1
13 Bankside, SE1
Block A1, 3rd floor, Butler's Wharf West, 40 Shad Thames, SE1
Buried: St Clement, Old Romney & Midley, Kent, TN299QH
Books: Derek Jarman's Garden, more
Artwork: TB or Not TB, Sightless, more
Awards: Teddy Award for Best Feature Film, more

In both his films and his writings, Derek Jarman's explicit project was to celebrate gay sexuality and imagine a place for it in English culture. At the Tyneside Film festival in 1987, he met Kevin Collins who was then 21. He had recently graduated and was writing software for the Government. He had been brought up in a village near Newcastle by parents who were socialists and devout Methodists. Jarman pursued Collins by letter and within a few months, Collins went to London and moved in with Jarman. They both were committed campaigners with OutRage! Collins nursed Jarman for the final seven years of his life. The Garden is a 1990 British art-house film by director Derek Jarman produced by James Mackay for Basilisk Communications in association with Channel 4, British Screen and ZDF. It focuses on homosexuality and Christianity set against a backdrop of Jarman's bleak coastal home of Dungeness in Kent, and his garden and the nearby landscape surrounding a nuclear power station, a setting Jarman compares to the Garden of Eden. Collins continues to oversee and manage the famous gardens built by Jarman at his house 'Prospect Cottage,' in Dungeness, Kent, England.
Together from 1987 to 1994: 7 years.
Derek Jarman (January 31, 1942 – February 19, 1994)
Kevin Collins (born 1966)

Days of Love edited by Elisa Rolle
ISBN-13: 978-1500563325
ISBN-10: 1500563323
Release Date: September 21, 2014
CreateSpace Store: https://www.createspace.com/4910282
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“The Garden” is a 1990 British arthouse film by director Derek Jarman produced by James Mackay for Basilisk Communications in association with Channel 4, British Screen and ZDF. It focuses on homosexuality and Christianity set against a backdrop of Jarman’s bleak coastal home of Dungeness in Kent, and his garden and the nearby landscape surrounding a nuclear power station, a setting Jarman compares to the Garden of Eden. Kevin Collins plays the role of one of the two gay lovers.
Address: Dungeness Rd, Romney Marsh TN29 9NE, UK (50.92251, 0.97607)
Type: Private Property
Place
Prospect Cottage was the home of film maker Derek Jarman at the end of his life. Despite being an inexperienced gardener and living in one of the most hostile gardening environments imaginable, he created a masterpiece, near Dungeness nuclear power station, using tolerant plants and materials found discarded nearby. Jarman believed that the Pilot Inn, nearby, provides “Simply the finest fish and chips in all England.” The garden design style is postmodern and highly context-sensitive - a complete rejection of modernist design theory. He disliked the sterility of modernism; he despised its lack of interest in poetry, allusion and stories; he deplored the techno-cruelty exemplified in Dr. D. G. Hessayon’s “How to be an expert” series of garden books. Jarman’s small circles of flint reminded him of standing stones and dolmens. He remarked that “Paradise haunts gardens, and some gardens are paradises. Mine is one of them. Others are like bad children, spoilt by their parents, over-watered and covered with noxious chemicals.” The poem on the black timber wall of Derek Jarman’s cottage is from John Donne’s poem “The Sun Rising” and reads:
Busy old fool, unruly Sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains, call on us ?
Must to thy motions lovers’ seasons run ?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late school-boys and sour prentices,
Go tell court-huntsmen that the king will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices;
Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.
In that the world’s contracted thus;
Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be
To warm the world, that’s done in warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;
This bed thy center is, these walls thy sphere
Life
Who: Michael Derek Elworthy Jarman (January 31, 1942 – February 19, 1994)
Derek Jarman was a film director, stage designer, diarist, artist, gardener and author. On Dec. 22, 1986, Jarman was diagnosed as HIV positive and discussed his condition in public. His illness prompted him to move to Prospect Cottage. In 1994, he died of an AIDS-related illness in London, aged 52. Jarman was buried in the graveyard at St Clement (Old Romney & Midley, Kent, TN299QH). Jarman’s surviving muse Keith Collins and Siouxsie and the Banshees founder Steven Severin both participated in the making of the film “Delphinium: A Childhood Portrait of Derek Jarman” (2009), which had its world premiere at the 2009 Reykjavik International Film Festival in Iceland, its UK premiere at the Raindance Film Festival in London, and its California premiere at the 2010 Frameline International Film Festival in San Francisco. In 2011 the film was permanently installed in the British Film Institute’s National Film Archive in London.

Queer Places, Vol. 2 edited by Elisa Rolle
ISBN-13: 978-1532906312
ISBN-10: 1532906315
Release Date: July 24, 2016
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In 1968, Derek Jarman had his first taste of riverside living in a house on the South Bank awaiting demolition, where he shared studio space with Peter Logan and the painter Tony Fry. Shortly afterwards he moved to a warehouse at 51 Upper Ground, SE1 near the corner of Blackfriars Road, a place that was to become “a Mecca for London's avant-garde” with its parties thrown by Jarman with Peter and Andrew Logan. Guests at the farewell party in the summer of 1970 included Tennessee Williams and “Ossie Clark, dispensing joints on the stairs.” Shortly afterwards the building was demolished to make way for the IPC Tower. Next stop was 13 Bankside, SE1 on the top floor of a riverside warehouse alongside Southwark Bridge. To cope with the cold in the warehouse, Jarman famously set up a greenhouse for his bedroom. Bankside too became famous for parties, and for film showings as Jarman began experimenting with Super 8. In summer 1972, Jarman had to move again to make way for another demolition, filming a final walk of the area called “One Last Walk One Last Look.” The following year, Jarman moved to a new home/studio in a semi-derelict warehouse at Butler's Wharf West, 40 Shad Thames, SE1 next to Tower Bridge. Jarman lived on the third floor of Block A1, with neighbours including Andrew and Peter Logan. On the waste ground next door Jarman filmed the ritualistic fire scenes for “In the Shadow of the Sun,” with a fire maze, candles and flashing mirrors. The finished film was finally released in 1981 with a soundtrack from Throbbing Gristle. “Jubilee” was also filmed locally in Southwark and Rotherhithe, and at the former dockside in Deptford where Jordan was filmed dancing round a fire including a burning Union Jack. Parties at Butlers Wharf included the 1975 Alternative Miss World, which Jarman took part in as “Miss Crepe Suzette” and one in 1978 when Adam and the Ants played. Jarman moved out in 1979. Revisiting in 1991, Jarman noted “The money has gilded the heart of it... everything else is scrubbed all the fun vanished.” (Source: Neil Gordon-Orr)