HOME | ABOUT | FICTION | INTERVIEWS | FEATURES | REVIEWS | NEWS | BUY THE PRINT MAGAZINE | BACK ISSUES | LINKS | CONTACT US

And the Ship Sailed On

An obituary for Derek Jarman

‘On December 22 1986, finding I was body positive, I set myself a target: I would disclose my secret and survive Margaret Thatcher. I did. Now I have set my sights on the millennium and a world where we are all equal.’

Writing in 1991, the great British film-maker, artist, writer, tireless gay rights campaigner and iconoclast Derek Jarman must have had a fair inkling that the millennium would be seen without him. He died from AIDS related complications in St. Bartholomew's hospital at 11 o'clock on February 19, 1994 after just over seven years of bravely battling the infection.

Jarman fought to cram into that last handful of years almost half a lifetime’s work, producing as a consequence one of the most formidable and honest back catalogues of any British artist. 1993 alone saw premieres of his last two cinema films: the funny, warm, intellectual Wittgenstein; and the ‘minimalist spectacle’ of Blue — a blank blue screen, reflecting his encroaching blindness, accompanied by a sophisticated soundtrack of music, sounds, and self-reflection. As ingenious and poignant as anything this charming, remarkable man ever achieved, it secured him the 1993 Michael Powell Prize at the Edinburgh Film Festival.

Glitterbug, his final film and a fitting epitaph, is a one hour BBC-commissioned collage of super-8 home movies made between 1970 and 1986; a nostalgic, intimate, touching portrait of friendship and happier times. He saw the most recent of his many books — a meditation on colour, Chroma — published just weeks before his death. And despite failing health and deteriorating voice, he was still enthusiastically granting interviews as late as January.

He was quietly buried in New Romney — not far from his beloved garden at Prospect Cottage, Dungeness — wearing the king’s gold cape from his 1991 film Edward II, and a cap inscribed ‘controversialist’.

Derek Jarman died, aged 52, two days before Parliament failed to reduce the age of consent for gay men to 16. 

© 2011 The Edge and contributors. All rights reserved. All contributors reserve the right to be identified as the authors of all works credited to them on this site, which should not be reproduced without permission.