Michael Derek Elworthy Jarman (31 January 1942 – 19 February 1994) was an English artist, film maker, stage designer, writer, gardener, and gay rights activist, regarded as one of the most influential figures associated with the new queer cinema. Trained originally as a painter, he moved into stage and production design in the late 1960s, including work on Ken Russell's controversial historical 1971 film The Devils, before turning to filmmaking as a director.
Jarman made his directorial debut with Sebastiane (1976), a Latin-language film depicting the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian through overt homoerotic imagery. The film established many of the characteristics of his work: an openly queer perspective, historical and literary source material treated anachronistically, and a willingness to court controversy. He went on to direct a body of unconventional films including the punk-inflected Jubilee (1978), the stylised biographical drama Caravaggio (1986), and the politically charged adaptation Edward II (1991).
Consistently working outside mainstream British film production, Jarman often struggled to secure financing and developed a distinctive low-budget, experimental practice, frequently using Super 8 film and video. He worked repeatedly with a close circle of collaborators, including actor Tilda Swinton, production designer Christopher Hobbs, costume designer Sandy Powell, producer James Mackay and composer Simon Fisher Turner.
Diagnosed with HIV in 1986, Jarman became one of the first public figures in Britain to speak openly about living with the disease. Throughout his career, Jarman was outspoken about homosexuality, his public fight for gay rights, and his personal struggle with HIV. His final feature film, Blue (1993), consisting of an unchanging blue screen accompanied by a layered soundtrack, was released four months before his death from an AIDS-related illness.
Jarman was born at the Royal Victoria Nursing Home in Northwood, Middlesex, England, the son of Elizabeth Evelyn (née Puttock) and Lancelot Elworthy Jarman. His father was a Royal Air Force officer, born in New Zealand. He rose to the rank of air commodore, and his last post before retiring in 1958 was as AOA of RAF Coastal Command. In Jarman's early years, the family was itinerant.
After a prep school education at Hordle House School, Jarman went on to board at Canford School in Dorset, an experience he found stifling. Under the guidance of the school's art master, Robin Noscoe, Jarman developed a lasting interest in painting, which he later characterised as a form of "self-defence". Although he had been offered a place with the Slade School of Fine Art at University College London, Jarman deferred entry after agreeing with his father that he would first pursue an academic degree. He studied English, History and the History of Art at King's College London between 1960 and 1963. This was followed by four years at the Slade.
From 1966 to 1969, Jarman rented a two-room flat on the top floor of 60 Liverpool Road, London, sharing rooms during the last year with fellow artist Keith Milow. In August 1969, he moved to Upper Ground, opposite Blackfriars Bridge, the first of a series of warehouses in the London Docklands. In his own words:
"an exhilarating change after seven years in cramped Georgian terrace houses and basements [..] the warehouse allowed me to slip quietly away from the 'scene' which for five years had been the centre of my life – and had now exhausted itself – and establish my own idiosyncratic mode of living".
In the 1970s, Jarman had a studio at Butler's Wharf, a riverside complex that housed a number of artists and designers. Among them was the sculptor and performance artist Andrew Logan, whose studio hosted the Alternative Miss World contest. Jarman took part in the event and, appearing as Miss Crêpe Suzette, won the 1975 contest before a judging panel that included the painter David Hockney.
Jarman began his career as a designer for the stage. His first major professional commission was designing sets and costumes for Jazz Calendar (1968), a ballet choreographed by Frederick Ashton, whose cast included Rudolf Nureyev. A chance meeting brought Jarman to the attention of the filmmaker Ken Russell, who invited him to design the sets for The Devils (1971) and Savage Messiah (1972), marking his entry into film production design.
At roughly the same period, Jarman began making films after being lent a camera by a friend. His earliest works were experimental Super 8 short films, made largely with friends. These films explored recurring interests in ritual and magic, documented aspects of gay subculture, and experimented formally. One of the first of these films was Studio Bankside, an experimental documentation of Jarman's warehouse studio and the community that inhabited it. At the space, Jarman also hosted informal film screenings and parties, at which feature films, underground cinema, and Super 8 works — including his own — were shown.
Jarman made his mainstream narrative filmmaking debut with Sebastiane (1976), about the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian. This was one of the first British films to feature positive images of gay sexuality; its dialogue was entirely in Latin. Music for the film was composed by Brian Eno. Sebastiane premiered at the Locarno Film Festival and subsequently opened at the Gate Cinema in London, where it enjoyed a well-attended run.
Inspired by meeting the punk icon Jordan, Jarman's next film was Jubilee (1978), in which Queen Elizabeth I of England is seen to be transported forward in time to a desolate and brutal wasteland ruled by her twentieth-century namesake. Jubilee has been described as "Britain's only decent punk film", and featured punk groups and figures such as Jayne County of Wayne County & the Electric Chairs, Toyah Willcox, Adam and the Ants and The Slits.
This was followed in 1979 by an adaptation of Shakespeare's The Tempest. The film was shot largely inside Stoneleigh Abbey in Warwickshire, and Jarman made changes to Shakespeare's text. The then 75-year-old singer Elisabeth Welch (credited only as "A Goddess") appears, performing her signature song "Stormy Weather".
Jarman's next major project was a film on the life of the Italian painter Caravaggio, a screenplay he first began writing in 1978. The project proved difficult to finance, and its development extended over several years. In the intervening period, Jarman continued to produce short and medium-length films, including Imagining October (1984), which drew parallels he perceived between Stalin's Russia and Thatcher's Britain. The film ran for eight weeks as an installation at Tate Britain. During this period Jarman met James Mackay, who became a key collaborator and producer on his subsequent work.
At the same time, Jarman began making music videos, approaching the form in a characteristically idiosyncratic way. His first was Broken English: Three Songs by Marianne Faithfull, which comprised visual interpretations of "Witch's Song", "The Ballad of Lucy Jordan" and the title track "Broken English". At a time when music videos were still relatively uncommon, the production of a single twelve-minute work spanning three songs was highly unusual. Jarman would go on to make music videos for artists including the Smiths and Pet Shop Boys.
Frustrated by the formality of 35mm film production and by the prolonged periods of inactivity associated with institutional funding — the production of Caravaggio would ultimately span eight years — Jarman and Mackay produced The Angelic Conversation (1985) as a means of circumventing conventional production methods. The film was shot on Super 8 and video formats and later blown up to 35mm for exhibition. Its imagery is accompanied by the voice of Judi Dench reciting Shakespeare's sonnets. The film featured Toby Mott and other members of the Grey Organisation, a radical artist collective.
At the end of 1985, the critic Michael O'Pray organised a touring retrospective of Jarman's work entitled Of Angels and Apocalypse. Shortly afterwards, Jarman's three feature films to date were broadcast on Channel 4 as part of a season presented by the critic David Robinson. The screenings generated considerable controversy. Mary Whitehouse petitioned the Director of Public Prosecutions to bring charges against the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) for permitting the broadcasts, while Jubilee and Sebastiane were repeatedly cited in relation to the so-called "video nasties" bill. Winston Churchill wrote to The Times criticising the IBA, and the film director Michael Winner publicly accused Jarman of making pornography.