SCFZ poll: Derek Jarman

[flip]

Polling the films of Derek Jarman

The rules:

- your list can include no more than half of the Jarman films you've seen, up to a maximum of 5. So if you've seen seven of his films, for example, you can list only a top 3. It's only if you've seen ten or more of his films than you can list the maximum of five.

- i'll assume ballots are ranked unless you tell me otherwise. unranked ballots are fine.

- deadline for ballots: next Friday, in seven days, whatever day that is

umbugbene created an index on letterboxd of all of our previous polls here: letterboxd.com/umbugbene/list/index-of-all-scfz-director-polls/

[flip]

let's use extended rules for this:

• if you have seen an odd number of jarman films, you can round up instead of down when deciding the length of your ballot (e.g. if you have seen 7, you can vote for 4 instead of the usual 3)

• if you have seen more than 10, you can vote for more than 5, subject to the restriction above (e.g. if you have seen 13, you can vote for up to 7).

[flip]

Wittgenstein
Edward II
Jubilee

seen five, some a long time ago, only really liked two of them but my opinions would possibly be different now

[wba]

seen only one, and it wasn't mindblowing, so I'll pass.

[greennui]

13.

Garden of Luxor
A Journey to Avebury
Blue
In the Shadow of the Sun
The Last of England

[brian d]

seen 13

sebastiane
caravaggio
edward ii
blue
the tempest
war requiem
the angelic conversation

[oscarwerner]

seen 11:
1-Caravaggio- (1986)
2-Edward II -(1991)
3-Sebastiane- (1976)
4-Wittgenstein-(1993)
5-War Requiem-(1989)

[mesnalty]

Seen 7:

1. Blue
2. Edward II
3. Wittgenstein
4. The Tempest

[St. Gloede]

Seen 5:

The Tempest

[niminy-piminy]

A Journey to Avebury
Ashden's Walk on Møn
Blue
The Last of England
Garden of Luxor
The Queen Is Dead: A Film By Derek Jarman
Glitterbug
Art of MIrrors
Pirate Tape
Stolen Apples for Karen Blixen
T.G.: Psychic Rally in Heaven
Wittgenstein

------------------
piror to the poll i have seen only 4 (STOLEN APPLES FOR KAREN BLIXEN, WITTGENSTEIN, GARDEN OF LUXOR, A JOURNEY TO AVEBURY).
now, i rewatched the 3 shorts (mentioned above).
it is hard to eliminate anything, because i like all his films i watched so far.
will try to watch also his 1993 film and as many shorts as i can — thus i am mildly pleading for this poll to stay open as long as possible (will keep updating the ballot in next days).

[nrh]

would also be mildly happy if the poll ran a little longer. have been going through a long youtube playlist of his music videos, many of which i did not even know existed...

[...]

Yah, add me to the keep it open gang. I'm doin' some rewatching and checking out more of his short stuff I missed before and trying to piece together some of the recurrent images into his overall design concept.

[nrh]

one other thing to mention - he was a really good writer, all of his books are really worth reading if you find them out in the world. would go as far as to say one of the great 20th century diary writers.

[flip]

i've been leaving all the recent polls open for ten days instead of seven, but i can always leave them open longer if people want, i'll ask again on tuesday next week if people want more time

[niminy-piminy]

am watching/listening...

Prof Robert Mills (UCL) presents his keynote paper 'Apocalypse Then: Derek Jarman’s Revelation and the Middle Ages' at The Courtauld Institute of Art as part of 'Imagining the Apocalypse' conference organised by Dr Edwin Coomasaru, October 2019.

https://youtu.be/J9DRBsS154Q

Bob Mills is Professor of Medieval Studies and Head of the History of Art Department. Between 2015 and 2018 he directed qUCL, UCL's LGBTQ research network. Bob's books include Suspended Animation: Pain, Pleasure and Punishment in Medieval Culture (2005), Seeing Sodomy in the Middle Ages (2015) and Derek Jarman's Medieval Modern (2018). Bob is currently working on questions of animality and sovereignty in medieval art.

[niminy-piminy]

am reading...

Derek Jarman: Radical Traditionalist
https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2007/gre ... rs/jarman/

[niminy-piminy]

a glimpse into Derek Jarman's bookshelf...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revelatio ... ivine_Love

Revelations of Divine Love is a medieval book of Christian mystical devotions. It was written between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries by Julian of Norwich, about whom almost nothing is known. It is the earliest surviving example of a book in the English language known to have been written by a woman.

REVELATIONS:
1/ Julian sees "red blood trickling down from under the Crown of Thorns" on a crucifix. She comprehends that the Holy Trinity is understood when Jesus appears. She sees his mother Mary as a young girl, and comprehends her nature. Jesus shows Julian "a little thing, the size of a hazelnut" as a sign of his love.

gonna chant this part in original (Middle English) during the next hazelnuts harvest...

"And in þis he shewed me a lytil thyng þe quantite of a hasyl nott. lyeng in þe pawme of my hand as it had semed. and it was as rownde as eny ball. I loked þer upon wt þe eye of my vnderstondyng. and I þought what may þis be. and it was answered generally thus. It is all þat is made. I merueled howe it myght laste. for me þought it myght sodenly haue fall to nought for lytyllhed. & I was answered in my vnderstondyng. It lastyth & euer shall for god louyth it. and so hath all thyng his begynning by þe loue of god. In this lytyll thyng I sawe thre propertees. The fyrst is. þt god made it. þe secunde is þet god louyth it. & þe þrid is. þat god kepith it."

And in this he showed me a little thing, the quantity of a hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand, it seemed, and it was as round as any ball. I looked thereupon with the eye of my understanding, and I thought, 'What may this be?' And it was answered generally thus: 'It is all that is made.' I wondered how it could last, for I thought it might suddenly fall to nothing for little cause. And I was answered in my understanding: 'It lasts and ever shall, for God loves it; and so everything has its beginning by the love of God.' In this little thing I saw three properties; the first is that God made it; the second is that God loves it; and the third is that God keeps it.

Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, chapter V "Westminster Cathedral Treasury, MS 4"

[deepbluefunk]

I could use another day or two if possible

[flip]

i was just going to ask - how much more time would people like to have? unless anyone wants longer, i'll tally this on friday along with the jack arnold poll

[niminy-piminy]

how much more time

i would like if derek jarman and juraj herz polls stay open till sunday.

[deepbluefunk]

seen 9

1. Blue
2. Caravaggio
3. T.G.: Psychic Rally in Heaven

that's it

[john ryan]

seen 10

1. Blue
2. Sebastiane
3. The Last of England
4. Jubilee
5. Edward II

[...]

Sebastiane
The Last of England
The Art of Mirrors
The Tempest
Jubilee
In the Shadow of the Sun
Wittgenstein

[sally]

jarman's death left a hole in british culture that's never been remotely filled. dungeness being one of the few cinematic pilgrimages one can make here aside from roundhay park (of course i've never done either, having been captivated on childhood holidays by the bleak pebble landscape long before i had ever heard of jarman, i never thought to go back, and having lived for a time a couple of streets away from the demolished ghost of that leprince house it didn't seem much of a pilgrimage to make)

sebastiane
the garden
the last of england
blue
a journey to avebury

[nrh]

The Angelic Conversations
Caravaggio
Wittgenstein
Blue
The Garden
Sebastiane
Glitterbug

Jarman seemed to such a unique place not just in film but in culture in general...who else is going to unite dame judi dench and coil? and his set designs for ken russell and the pet shop boys, the fine and and activism, the diaries...

[flip]

very close contest between two films, two surprises to me, though probably not to anyone who knows jarman's work well - 19 different films got votes (i didn't realize jarman had been so prolific), and a few early jarman shorts did very well in the voting (i'd never heard anyone talk about those shorts before this poll)

results
1. Blue (1993) — 24 pts
2. Sebastiane (1976) — 22.5 pts
3. Caravaggio (1986) — 15 pts
4. Edward II (1991) — 13 pts
4. The Last of England (1988) — 13 pts
6. Wittgenstein (1993) — 10.3 pts
7. A Journey to Avebury (1971) — 10 pts
8. Garden of Luxor (1972) — 6 pts
9. The Angelic Conversation (1987) — 5.3 pts
10. The Garden (1990) — 5 pts
10. The Tempest (1979) — 5 pts
12. Ashden’s Walk on Mon (1973) — 4 pts
12. Jubilee (1978) — 4 pts
14. Art of Mirrors (1973) — 3 pts
15. In the Shadow of the Sun (1980) — 2.5 pts
16. War Requiem (1989) — 1.5 pts
17. TG: Psychic Rally in Heaven (1981) — 1 pt
18. The Queen is Dead (1986) — 0.5 pts
19. Glitterbug (1994) — 0.3 pts

[flip]

posted this to lbox

https://letterboxd.com/fliptrotsky/list ... -poll-288/

[niminy-piminy]

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/195 ... n_s_Garden

This book is Derek Jarman's own record of how this garden evolved, from its earliest beginnings in 1986 to the last year of his life. More than 150 photographs taken since 1991 by his friend and photographer Howard Sooley capture the garden at all its different stages and at every season of the year. Photographs from all angles reveal the garden's complex geometrical plan, its magical stone circles and its beautiful and bizarre sculptures.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/j ... eum-london

Surrounded by poppies, sea kale and a nuclear power station, the late director’s otherworldly cottage and garden in Kent have been saved for the nation. And now there’s good news for anyone who can’t wait to see inside



When the director and artist Derek Jarman began making his garden on the great shingle expanse outside his cottage in Dungeness, local fishermen feared something occult was afoot. “People thought I was building a garden for magical purposes,” Jarman said at the time, “a white witch out to get the nuclear power station.”

...

Obsessed with flowers since he was a boy, Jarman dreamed of a magical rose garden emerging from the arid shingle. His parents had given him the 1926 illustrated manual, Beautiful Flowers and How to Grow Them, for his fourth birthday, and he spent his youth making little gardens, winning a prize at boarding school for his plot. Prospect Cottage was the first time he had the chance to make an entire garden of his own from scratch, and he began with 30 rose plants, brought to the coast from a nursery in Kensington. As Collins wrote: “Derek imagined himself surrounded by a forest of impenetrable thorns, eventually hacked down by a true-hearted, handsome prince.”

Most of the roses withered. Jarman turned instead to native plants – sea kale, wild peas, viper’s bugloss, teasels and sea holly. As Sooley recalls, he would use driftwood sticks to mark out the delicate purple shoots of the sea kale, “hidden under the shingle like long-abandoned land mines”. The sticks would then be adorned with with flotsam scavenged on his daily beach-combing walks, from chains and anchors to sea-smoothed bricks and sun-bleached crab shells. And so the garden grew, plants sprouting where the wind blew their seeds. Jarman occasionally intervened, writes Sooley, “waving dried seed heads over an area the might benefit from a foxglove or yellow horned poppy,” like some robed alchemist casting a spell, and marking out meandering paths “devised around the needs of plants, and not the other way around”.

...

As the film-maker said towards the end of his life: “Every flower is a triumph. I’ve had more fun from this place than I’ve had with anything else in my life. I should have been a gardener.”

btw. i didn't mention yet on this forum that i bought and planted Ingrid Bergman this autumn!
i hope she will bloom in my garden as splendid as on the retailer's promo picture.


i also hope that the green dude who likes to feed on the roses i grow will appreciate the privilege to nibble on Ingrid Bergman next year!