Gay, Punk and Ever the Provocateur

Gay, Punk and Ever the Provocateur
New York Times, United States  WITH each passing year the British artist and iconoclast Derek Jarman seems at once more important and more marginal. His place in history as a pioneering gay filmmaker is secure, but his work remains little seen, and the spirit in which it was made seems further away than ever.

Mr. Jarman died of complications from AIDS in 1994, at 52, and perhaps the time is ripe for reappraisal. “Derek,” a documentary tribute by Isaac Julien that had its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January, will screen at the Museum of Modern Art in New York from June 9 through 16. On June 24 Zeitgeist Films, the distributor that helped introduce Mr. Jarman to American audiences, is releasing “Glitterbox,” a DVD set that represents a cross section of his films: the neo-Brechtian biopics “Caravaggio” (1986) and “Wittgenstein” (1993); the homoerotic reverie “The Angelic Conversation” (1985); and his monochrome valediction, “Blue” (1993), as moving an epitaph as any artist has ever composed for himself.

Mr. Julien’s “Derek” combines clips from Mr. Jarman’s movies, excerpts from a 1990 interview and a ruminative voice-over by Tilda Swinton, who also served as executive producer. In an e-mail message, Ms. Swinton, a frequent collaborator of Mr. Jarman’s whose first film role was in “Caravaggio,” said the documentary had been prompted in part by the blank looks she received when talking about him to aspiring filmmakers.

“It feels like the correct time to be reminded of an ancient tradition that has always served civilization well,” she said, “that of the independent, truth-telling poet provocateur.”