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Derek Jarman, Sex vs. Politics

By Karina Longworth posted 1 year ago

At the Guardian, Andrew Pulver laments the fall Derek Jarman (and the personal, high-art cinema he made and represented) from cinephile fashion. He blames this in part on the revival of the commercial British film industry:

One problem is the seismic shift of the cinematic landscape since Jarman’s death in 1994, the same year that saw the release of Four Weddings and a Funeral. One of Jarman’s main weapons had been that, in the Thatcher era, there was no one else putting out Britain-centred product so enthusiastically. His small-scale, personalised vision undoubtedly helped him survive the 1980s and, to some extent, prosper. But with the revival of the commercial end of the British film industry, the very people who most resented Jarman’s productivity regained the initiative. After his death, his cinematic influence virtually vanished.

The idea of Jarman as a “Britain-centred” filmmaker reminded me of one of the things I found most frustrating about Derek, Isaac Julien and Tilda Swinton’s collaborative, impressionist doc on their late friend, which I saw at Sundance last month (Pulver mentions both Julien and Swinton but not the film, although I have to imagine this post was in part motivated by Derek’s premiere this week in Berlin).

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Indies, Video

Morrissey Fan Docs

By Karina Longworth posted 2 years ago

This NME story points to the trailer for Passions Just Like Mine, a documentary about Morrissey fans directed by Kerri Koch. According to the movie’s website, the film focuses on one fan in particular, a working-class Mexican immigrant named Jose who “credits Morrissey with saving his life.”

This makes Passions the second documentary about the Los Angeles-based subculture of Latino Morrissey fans that I’ve heard of in as many years. The first was Is it Really So Strange?, directed by William T. Jones, which I saw at Anthology Film Archives in 2006, at a hipster-packed screening where I sat behind celebrity Smiths fan Chloe Sevigny. What made that film interesting was the ingenious ways in which Jones turned his lack of access into an asset. A photographer-turned filmmaker, Jones structured the film as fan’s photo album of fandom. His only meeting with Morrissey was almost accidental, but Jones’ diary-esque telling of that encounter was compelling in an almost confessional way.

It’ll be interesting to see if Koch’s approach sufficiently differentiates her film from Jones‘, which screened at several festivals and is available on DVD via Frameline. I’ll tell you one thing: I never thought I’d have to worry about Latino Morrissey fan doc fatigue.

UPDATE: In the comments, Matt Dentler and Tom Hall point to Viva Morrissey, another doc about Morrissey’s Latino fans (this one’s a short), which screened at SXSW in 2006. I haven’t seen it, but of the three films, it certainly has the most sophisticated trailer.

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Indies