BROKEN ENGLAND:

JARMANS COLLAGES OF MODERN ALIENATION

Ruth Alonso Marian Briozzo Francis Li Chen Yao-wen Hsu Beatrice Read Giulia Saccogna Lene Juliussen Julia Fryett Katie Croft Special thanks to: Nick Roddick Francis Gooding

Selected music videos of Derek Jarman and his nonnarrative feature - The Last of England (1987).

09:30-13:00 26 March 2012 Birkbeck Cinema

cover: Still from Broken English (1987)

SCHEDULE
09:30 - Welcome and Introduction by Beatrice Read PART 1: SELECTED MUSIC VIDEOS 09:40 - Broken English, Marianne Faithfull, 1300 with intro by Marian Briozzo 10:00 - The Queen is Dead, The Smiths, 0627 with intro by Yao-wen Hsu 10:15 - In the Pouring Rain, Bob Geldof, 0428 with intro by Giulia Saccogna 10:30 - It's a Sin, Pet Shop Boys, 0511 with intro by Ruth Alonso 10:45 - BREAK PART 2: FULL-LENGTH FEATURE FILM 11:00 11:15 12:45 13:00 Intro by Lene Juliussen and Julia Fryett The Last of England, 8700 Questions from the audience The end

INTRODUCTION
Derek Jarman (1942-1994) was one of the most celebrated British avant-garde filmmakers of the late 20th Century. Though best known for feature films such as Jubilee (1977) and Caravaggio (1986), Jarman made a number of music videos: he was ambivalent about working in the medium, but it gave him the money to fund his passion projects, and a chance to experiment with imagery. In particular, he used the artistic technique of collage as a way of expressing the contradictions of society at large, and perhaps his own life. Collage had been employed by the Futurists, Dadaists and Pop artists as a creative medium to integrate art with every-day life, and as a protest against traditional social values - Jarman did the same with the moving image. He juxtaposed super-8 footage, Sizes Serving archive material and 35mm film as a collage artist might paste together materials on a flat surface. In this programme, audiences will see how Jarman expressed his disillusionment and alienation from modern British society in short promos for musicians such as The Smiths, Bob Geldof and Marianne Faithfull all of whom would have sympathised with his sentiments. He fine-tuned his technique to portray his anger with Englands political state in the final film of the programme, the 1987 feature - The Last of England. Jarmans works are still relevant in the 21st Century, where the technique of collage and collation remain more prevalent than ever. Just look at Lana Del Rays Videogames, and now Plan Bs recent video for his postriots protest song, Ill Manors where he juxtaposes real footage of Londons riots with still photos of David Cameron, live action and animation. Like Jarman 25 years ago, Plan B aka Ben Drew is vocalising his loss of faith in the state of his nation. Formats may have changed, but it seems that British societys sentiments have not.
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COLLAGES OF MODERN ALIENATION looks at the relationship of Derek Jarman's music videos and feature film The Last of England to the notion of the aesthetic continuity of collage, and to the personal statement on alienation in modern context. Put together for this program, the works of Jarman made in the late 70s and 80s describe social movements and a film movement in Britain that were historically significant.
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PRELUDE
Collages of Modern Alienation and the Derek Jarman Paradox In August 2002, eight years after Derek Jarman lost his life to AIDS, Tilda Swinton wrote him a letter. In it she reminisces, with some disparagement, on the state of the British film industry during the Thatcher years in which she and Jarman were making films together: You remember that renaissance they all got moist about in the 1980s after Chariots of Fire won four Oscars - "The British are coming?1 It is then timely that during a new era of Conservatism, we have supposedly returned to what has been hailed by Chris Smith as the flourishing of the British film industry. But once again the commercial mainstream is being celebrated at the cost of artistic experimentalism. In a time of crisis for both Britain and its film industry, it seems inevitable that we should turn our attention to the figure whose films were a reaction to a similar political and cultural disarray that Britain was experiencing during the time of his productivity. Derek Jarman has come to be known as the embodiment of the Renaissance man; painter, set designer, gardener, poet, filmmaker and political activist. This colloquial tagline also extends further to his specific interest in the High Renaissance. But Jarmans cross-curricular concerns can also be echoed in the visual topography of his film, as a collage of aesthetics and appropriation, rich with a layered textuality both in the visual and literal sense. It is this notion of collage in Jarmans work that this essay sets out to examine, and in doing so comment on how it is used by Jarman, to express his personal milieu, as a construct of subjectivity.

We are encouraged to read Jarmans films as we would read a poem rather than a novel or play with a linear narrative. Or as Steven Dillon suggests, Jarmans work employs a new genre; that of the lyric film. Rather than moving forward through cause and effect, it is a set of figurations and associations that his films proceed by, using a set of images which Jarman coined emblemata, implying their symbolic presence to invite an interpretation. Jarmans first feature was in Latin and his last consisted of no other image than a blue screen, but somewhere on this scale of controversy lies the space occupied by the Jarmanesque merging of art and mainstream; lyricism and political preoccupation, that has come to define the Serving filmmaking typified in The Last of England collage Sizes (1987) and many of Jarmans music videos. This visual layering of imagery and images, is perhaps born from a dichotomy of self that lies at the heart of the Jarman paradox. The individual as an artist is a concept familiar to Jarmans films; they are in essence a brand of himself and recognisable through his (often hermeneutic but in this case stylistic) visual imagery. deeply critical: Individualism can be quite destructive because it indulges itself at the expense of other voices2. Jarman engages on a direct level with popular culture, exemplified by his association with music video directing. This seems at odds with the traditionalist sensibility of much of his work, exploring high culture, English values, Shakespeare and neo-romanticism. However the preoccupation with Englishness becomes manifest in his handling of

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popular culture, which is born out of the post-punk street practice rather than the capitalist fuelled massproduction which Jarman equates to an Americanization of Britain. The New York sequence in The Last of England serves to illustrate Jarmans criticism of such consumer culture. This synthesis of culture characterises Jarmans ability in his films to balance a number of tensions: modernity and tradition, formalism and radicalism for example. And through his carefully crafted equilibrium he achieves the resolution of a number of contradictions. John Hill writes, It is a cinema, moreover, that goes beyond the adversarial stances of modernist self-reflexivity to embrace a diversity of aesthetic means more characteristic of postmodernism. As such it crosses a number of boundaries to create a form of hybrid cinema in which a diversity of aesthetic means are employed to challenge, or make strange, our perceptions of both past and present.3 In doing so, Jarmans films project not only a sense of self, but conversely a feeling of alienation in his collages of contemporary and vintage images. When considering the idea of modern alienation in the films of Jarman, we will undoubtedly arrive at his depiction of gay culture as inherent to both Jarmans subjective vision and equally as an active issue of the socio-political context in which he was working. However, to stray from the obvious contentions that arise when handling a controversial subject, we must examine
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Jarmans extraordinary re-reading of the past in accordance to modern gay sensibilities. This projection of contemporary queer concerns onto historical subject matter (i.e. the gay artists in Caravaggio (1986) or the homo-eroticizing of Shakespeares sonnets in The Angelic Conversation (1985)) creates a disjuncture of viewing akin to the alienation appropriated by society surrounding queer culture. This is particularly resonant with Jarman specifically, as he experienced the marginalisation of homosexuality caused by the AIDS turmoil and the social legitimising of homophobia that came with it. The intolerance of gay sexuality was fuelled by the New Right (exemplified by Clause 28 which prohibited local authorities from the intentional promotion of homosexuality) and Jarmans films, in particular The Last of England, are reactionary against the socially divisive and culturally damaging4 effects of Thatcherism.

Dillon writes of The Last of England that it is, splendidly pitched beyond our recognizable world and certainly beyond recognizable genre. Original, unforgiving, and otherworldly, The Last of England aims for and achieves a truly visionary cinema.5 Although devised as a series of set pieces with no dialogue, unlike previous executions of this arrangement (War Requiem (1989), The Angelic Conversation) the relationship between sound and screen space is much closer. Jarman terms the film a dream allegory; whereby the images we see refer to a poets subconscious. Jarman writes: In dream allegory, the poet encounters personifications of psychic states.6
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These states go some way to forming a visual reaction to the state of England at the time, and Jarman himself acts at the bookend of reality, appearing at the beginning of the film as a poet, or its omniscient narrator. It has been suggested by John Wyatt in Autobiography, Home movies and Derek Jarmans History Lesson that the super 8 footage in The Last of England grounds the film in reality, and that without it, we could mistake the entire film for a construct of fantasy. Furthermore, Wyatt observes the paradoxical nature of the super 8 images in their ambiguous content and rejection of our pre-conceived expectation that they will document something specific. By having the super 8 scenes so open to interpretation, Jarman is entertaining the idea of a defamiliarisation of the home movie; thus entirely reversing their connotation. Wyatt concludes that, The Last of England multiplies the possible meanings of the home footage , meaning any subjective autobiographical connotation of the super 8 footage7 is not enforced, but we are compelled to read the film in a more generalised way. The Last of England then, entertains the concept of collages of modern alienation in a number of ways. Firstly, in terms of visual and audio style, as described by Wymer: The film which emerged from the editing process is a rich and powerful one but one which makes considerable demands on its audience, given that it runs for eighty-seven minutes with no obvious storyline, no named characters, no dialogue, and only intermittently synchronised sound It intercuts footage with different tints and grains, moving continually between blue, red, and brown monochrome, full colour, black and white, and an electronically enhanced
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artificial palette... Some sequences are edited with such speed that the flow of images becomes virtually subliminal, inducing an anxiety that if one looks away for a moment or blinks, one will have missed something crucial.8 The intertextuality of the image and sound not only appeals to a form of moving visual collage, but equally gives rise (as Wymer observes) to a feeling of alienation caused through the manipulation of video image and sound. We are then, both alienated through Jarmans distinct use of this modern technology; the video camera, and alienated from modernity by the disruption of the linear image and sound we would expect to be produced. Secondly, the content of The Last of England with its political preoccupation is alienating in the sense that it appropriates a visual allegory for a political representation. It is contemporary in its subject, and yet we are distanced from a direct portrayal of its substance. On the modern alienation of The Last of England we could apply Dillons analysis: The fires of end times and apocalypse allow for a surreal and transcendental approach, and The Last of England makes the most of this opportunity, proceeding unashamedly by means of allegorical signs and emblematic performances.9 When entertaining the concept of collage we must be careful not to overly employ Eisensteins construct of montage, which can be viewed in Bazinian terms as antidemocratic by manipulating the audiences response. Jarman attributed his filmmaking style to allowing the audience, much greater freedom to interpret what they are seeing10. Montage is used by Jarman to open up meaning,
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rather than limit it, by appealing to the emotions and senses rather than critical capabilities. Take for example Swintons final dance sequence in The Last of England, where the use of cinematic techniques to disorient the viewer in a visual cacophony of colour, grain, speed and edits renders, as Hill observes, any interpretation of it is necessarily destined to be reductionist.11 That is not to say that the visual idiom of montage to create symbols and meaning through juxtaposition is redundant here. The image of a wreath is intercut with and superimposed over images of terrorists fire and a man drinking vodka, for example. A more obvious visual connection made through montage is the image of an impoverished man eating cauliflower intercut with a businessman pouring grain over himself. Jarmans construct of collage however arises in part from a purely aesthetic formalism which links images to create a visual kinetic pattern, based on similarities and contrasts of colour, shape, and movement12 such as the image of a butterfly preceding that of a silhouetted hand. * Leonardo da Vinci, the original Renaissance man, once wrote on the dissolution of identity, which was so dreaded and desired by Jarman, that, man is the image of the world.13 In this phrase we may find the terms that define Jarman; through him we get a deeply individual image of not only his world, but also the particular time and place of ours.

With this in mind, we can refer back to Swintons letter to Derek, which continues: Jeremy Isaacs asks you, last of all, how you would like to be remembered, and you say you would like to disappear. That you would like to take all your works with you and... evaporate.14 The very fact that Jarmans works are being revisited and acclaimed eighteen years after his disappearance resonates with the paradox he projected for himself. Though deeply of their time and place, Jarmans films are palpable today. It is through this that his collages of alienation are made truly modern.

Notes:
1. Tilda Swinton, Letter to an Angel, August 2002, http:// www.guardian.co.uk/film/2002/aug/17/books.featuresreviews 2. BFI Jarman collection II, box 12, typescript of autobiographical statement by Jarman, p4 3. John Hill, British Films of the 1980s, Clarendon Press, 1999, p156 4. Hill, p156 5. Steven Dillon, Derek Jarman and the Lyric Film: The Mirror and The Sea, Texas University Press, 2004, p163 6. ibid. 7. re-quoted in Dillon, p165 8. Rowland Wymer, Derek Jarman, Manchester University Press, 2005, p113 9. Dillon, p163 10. Derek Jarman, The Last of England, Constable, 1987, p193 11. Hill, p156 12, Ibid., p157 13. Leonardo da Vinci, Literary Works, Jean Paul Richter, vol 2, 1970, Phaidon, p242
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SELECTED MUSIC VIDEOS

Broken English (UK, 1979), Marianne Faithfull Featuring: Witches Song, The Balllad of Lucy Jordan and Broken English Director: Derek Jarman Producer: Guy Ford, Mark Miller Mundy DOP: Peter Mddleton, Bob Mc Shane Editors: Dennis Firminger, Mire Nic Suibhne Sound: Lou Hawks Total Duration: 1300 Original format: Super 8, 16mm, Color, Black and White Courtesy of: Island Records Broken English is Derek Jarmans first venture into music videos. It was made in 1979 and shot on super 8 and 16mm before being blown up to 35mm for cinema release. The lyrics, inspired by the German activist Ulrike Meinhof, were written in response to the reemergence of Fascism in the '70s.
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The Queen is Dead (UK, 1986), The Smiths Director: Derek Jarman Executive Producer: Ray Still Editors and DOP: Derek Jarman, John Maybury, Richard Heslop, Chris Hughes, Sally Yeadon Total Duration: 0627 Original format: Super 8, Colour, Black and White Courtesy of: Warner Music Made in 1986 and shot on Super 8, The Queen is Dead makes up a trilogy of songs, alongside There Is A Light That Never Goes Out and Panic. The Smiths never actually met Jarman, and he made these videos privately while the band was on tour in America. The video illustrates the social scene and turbulent spirit at the time during the end of Thatchers second term in government.

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In the Pouring Rain (UK, 1987), Bob Geldof

Director: Derek Jarman Producer: James Mackay Production company: Anglo International Films Production DOP: Richard Heslop and Chris Hughes Costume Designer: Sandy Powell Total Duration: 0430 Original format: Super 8 and 8mm video, colour Courtesy of: Mercury Records In the Pouring Rain was shot in Super 8 and 8mm in a crucial year, in which Jarman moved to Prospect Cottage on the Kent coast and started then working on collages. The techniques of his repertoire of DIY transformation, well shown in this video, includes: use of speeded up / slowed down footage, time-lapse photography, rapid pans and zooms, deliberate camera shake and camera moves in and out of focus, extreme close-ups, shots into a light source, rapid montages, refilmed images.
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Its a sin (UK, 1987), Pet Shop Boys

Director: Derek Jarman Producer: James Mackay DOP: Chris Hughes, Cerith Wyn-Evans Editor: Peter Cartwright Costume Design: Sandy Powell Cast: Geena Davis, Ron Moody, Duggie Fields, Stephen Linard, Chris Hughes, Richard Logan, Gerard Raimond Total Duration: 0511 Original Format: 35mm, colour Courtesy of: EMI Records One of the fathers of international New Queer Cinema, Jarmans sexuality had always been a significant part of his work. This is a video he directed for the Pet Shop Boys, a band that is also considered to be a gay icon, which shows how much Jarman was haunted by his sexuality. His personal style is absent here and yet, Jarman himself once remarked it was the best thing he ever did.
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FULL-LENGTH FEATURE FILM

Serving Sizes

The Last of England (1987, UK) Director: Derek Jarman Producers: James Mackay, Don Boyd, Yvonne Little CDOP: Derek Jarman, Christopher Hughes, Cerith Wyn Evans, Richard Heslop Footage: the 1920s by Harry Puttock, the 1940s by Lance Jarman. Editors: Peter Cartwright, Angus Cook, John Maybury, Sally Yeadon Production Design: Christopher Hobbs Costume Design: Sandy Powell Original format: 35mm, colour and black and white Total Duration: 8700 Original Music: Simon Turner With: Tilda Swinton, Spencer Leigh, and Spring.

Ford Madox Brown, The Last of England(1852-1855) Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery

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Derek Jarman began The Last of England (1987) following eight years of laboring on Caravaggio (1986). Disillusioned by the financial dependency of shooting with 35mm, he returned to the format that gave him the most artistic freedom and was his medium of choice for his music videos; Super 8. He began production in August of 1986 and finished in early 1987, filming in London, Liverpool and New York. Comprised of home videos edited in among unscripted scenes shot with a compact cast, The Last of England represents Jarmans most experimental film. The Last of England draws on traditions of European film auteurs such as Pasolini and Renoir, along with the American avant-garde movement spearheaded by Kenneth Anger. Stylistically, the film is best described as a visual poem. It is non-narrative and has an abstract quality with no named characters, no dialogue and only an intermittent poetic voice-over. As one of the key British films of the 1980s, The Last of England presents an apocalyptic portrait of England under Thatcher. Political fury is tempered with an expressive nostalgia for Britains past. In Jarmans autobiography Kicking the Pricks, released concurrently with the feature, the director describes his aesthetic process for The Last of England: You could achieve effects on video which would have cost a fortune on film... Blown up to 35mm, the quality is something quite new, like stained glass, the film glows with wonderful colours. The video gives you a pallette like a painter, and I find the result beautiful. Most 35mm looks pretty hard and brassy in comparison. The system produces blacks like the lead in stained glass, shadowy and mysterious, even when the sun is blazing."

BIOGRAPHY
Michael Derek Elworthy Jarman was born in Northwood, Middlesex, on 31 January 1942. He was educated at the University of London and at the Slade School of Art. He had a studio at Butler's Wharf, London, and was part of the Andrew Logan social scene in the 1970s. His was first drawn into the film industry as a set designer on Ken Russell's The Devils (1971) and Savage Messiah (1972). His first films were experimental super 8mm shorts. The groundbreaking debut feature Sebastiane (1976) was the first homoerotic movie shown on general release in the UK. From 70s to 90s, Jarman was a leading figure in British independent filmmaking. His low-budget avantgarde films turned out surprisingly profitable; he also directed music videos and concert films for such bands as The Smith and Pet Shop Boys. With the advent of Channel 4 funding in the mid-80s and the ensuing wave of internationally distributed low-budget British art cinema, Jarman was able to develop his status as a major European auteur. In the post production of The Last of England (1987), he had been diagnosed as HIV positive. The illness prompted him to move to Prospect Cottage, Dungeness in Kent, where he cultivated a famous and much publicised garden. In the last eight years of his life, he never stopped being a major public spokesman of gay rights activism nor stopped creating his arts poems, monographs, paintings, and films. He died in London on 19 February 1994, aged 52.

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