Derek Jarman’s confessional drama stars his muse, Tilda Swinton.
As his AIDS-related illness progressed, Derek Jarman left London for a tiny house in Dungeness on the Kent coast. There he created a garden, which he decorated with rocks and metal debris found on the seashore. In the early 1990s, he began filming The Garden, a visually stunning and deeply personal meditation on Christianity, homosexuality, and the persecution of homosexuals. The locations were around his house, which stood in the shadow of an atomic power plant on a bleak shingle beach. The film ends with a text Jarman wrote after one of his friends passed away: “I walk in this garden holding the hands of dead friends…” The film was selected to compete in the Moscow International Film Festival in 1991.
The Garden
Director: Derek Jarman
UK, Germany, 1990. 92’ 18+
