Derek Jarman – Page 7 – { feuilleton }

Weekend links 323

Mescaline Woods (1969) by Gage Taylor.

• The soundtrack to The Man Who Fell to Earth will be released for the first time next month in a double-disc set (CD & vinyl). This isn’t, as some people have hoped, David Bowie’s unheard music for the film, but a collection of the pre-existing songs and other pieces, plus the original compositions by John Phillips. Consequence of Sound has a track list.

• At Scream Addicts: Joe R. Lansdale talks about the only film adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House that you need to see: the 1963 version directed by Robert Wise.

• The new wave of new age: How music’s most maligned genre finally became cool by Adam Bychawski.

• Transmissions From The Abyss: Dark ambient music for the perfect headspace by S. Elizabeth.

• Jason Farrago reviews Art Aids America, an exhibition at the Bronx Museum, New York.

• Curse Go Back: a limited reissue of tape experiments by William Burroughs.

• Samuel Wigley on Notorious at 70: toasting Hitchcock’s dark masterpiece.

• Toyah Willcox remembers working with Derek Jarman on The Tempest.

• “Why are musicians so obsessed with David Lynch?” asks Selim Bulut.

• Read the original 32-page programme for Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.

• David Parkinson chooses 10 essential films starring Oliver Reed.

• Mixes of the week: The Sounds of the Dawn NTS radio shows.

• Keith Haring envisions Manhattan as a kingdom of penises.

• Frank Guan on Massive Attack’s Blue Lines, 25 years on.

• Honky Tonk Pts 1 & 2 (1956) by Bill Doggett | I’ve Told Every Little Star (1961) by Linda Scott | I’m Deranged (1995) by David Bowie

Pierrot in Turquoise, or The Looking Glass Murders

A final Bowie post included here as much for its connections to Derek Jarman. Pierrot in Turquoise was a pantomime by Lindsay Kemp based on the characters of the Commedia dell’arte, and broadcast by Scottish Television in 1970. David Bowie is “Cloud”, a non-commedia character who provides songs while perched atop a step-ladder. The smaller independent TV stations like Scottish often used to fill out their end-of-day programming with oddities such as this, the kind of thing that would have been screened once to a bewildered audience then forgotten.

Kemp’s production reverses some of the commedia traditions by having his Pierrot challenge Jack Birkett’s Harlequin, the exchange of roles taking place after a Cocteau-like journey through a mirror. Pierrot lacks a hat but otherwise his costume resembles the one that Bowie wore in the Ashes to Ashes video. Two years and a gulf of reinvention separate this little pantomime from Kemp and Bowie’s next encounter in Mick Rock’s video for John, I’m Only Dancing, a film the BBC found too weird and/or queer, and refused to show.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Flowers: A Pantomime for Jean Genet
• Lindsay Kemp’s Salomé again

Neutron designs

The Bowie overload this week had me thinking again about Derek Jarman’s unmade science-fiction film, Neutron, an apocalyptic work that would have starred David Bowie if the finance had been forthcoming. Jarman’s description in an earlier post about the film remains tantalising:

There are six published manuscripts of Neutron, which zig-zag their anti-heroes Aeon and Topaz across the horizon of a bleak and twilit post-nuclear landscape. ‘Artist’ and ‘activist’ in their respective former lives, they are caught up in the apocalypse, where the PA systems of Oblivion crackle with the revelations of John the Divine. Their duel is fought among the rusting technology and darkened catacombs of the Fallen civilization, until they reach the pink marble bunker of Him. The reel of time is looped—angels descend with flame-throwers and crazed religious sects prowl through the undergrowth. The Book of Revelations is worked as science fiction.

Lee [Drysdale] and I pored over every nuance of this film. We cast it with David Bowie and Steven Berkoff, set it in the huge junked-out power station at Nine Elms and in the wasteland around the Berlin Wall. Christopher Hobbs produced xeroxes of the pink marble halls of the bunker with their Speer lighting—that echo to ‘the muzak of the spheres’ which played even in the cannibal abattoirs, where the vampire orderlies sipped dark blood from crystal goblets.

This is one of those great what-if projects along with Jodorowsky’s film of Dune, Nicolas Roeg’s Flash Gordon, and others, so it was a surprise to discover a handful of recent designs for Neutron produced by students at the Wimbledon College of Art. The video here is a short collection of stills by Jonny Blackmore. There’s another of his pieces here, and further designs by Gabrielle Cole here and here. I’m guessing that these were part of a college assignment but if anyone knows otherwise please leave a comment. As to the original Neutron, some version of the script must still exist (Jon Savage was apparently involved in later stages) as must Christopher Hobbs’ designs. Maybe we’ll see them in a book one day.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Derek Jarman’s Neutron

Shooting the Hunter: a tribute to Derek Jarman

A short film by Mark French and Richard Heslop, Shooting the Hunter was made last year to honour the 20th anniversary of Derek Jarman’s death in February, 1994. The film intercuts shots of Jarman’s gravestone and Prospect Cottage at Dungeness with footage of the same cottage when it was being used as a setting for Jarman’s The Garden in 1990. The sound design is by Fritz Catlin of 23 Skidoo, with the words of John Donne being read by Amina Bastante Pain.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Derek Jarman’s landscapes
• Derek Jarman album covers
• Ostia, a film by Julian Cole
• Derek Jarman In The Key Of Blue
• The Dream Machine
• Jarman (all this maddening beauty)
• Sebastiane by Derek Jarman
• A Journey to Avebury by Derek Jarman
• Derek Jarman’s music videos
• Derek Jarman’s Neutron
• Mister Jarman, Mister Moore and Doctor Dee
• The Tempest illustrated
• In the Shadow of the Sun by Derek Jarman
• Derek Jarman at the Serpentine
• The Angelic Conversation
• The life and work of Derek Jarman

Fat of the Land: selected British short films, 1984–1987

Here’s another of those film/video anthologies released on VHS in the UK in the 1980s that I never got to see at the time. Fat of the Land is a collection of student films, short video experiments and two video pieces related to the early Industrial music scene featuring 23 Skidoo and Last Few Days. The anthology appeared in 1988 as Ikon 25 on Factory Records’ video label packaged with an approving quote by Derek Jarman. Two Jarman collaborators appear within—Cerith Wyn Evans and Tilda Swinton—while director Richard Heslop (who hosts this at Vimeo) is featured in front and behind the camera in many of the pieces. Heslop is responsible for Language, the 23 Skidoo video, and dons angel wings for Maggie Jailler’s A Nosegay, a homoerotic homage to Genet and Lautréamont. Jailler’s film is my favourite but then I’m biased towards the content.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Dream Machine
• Seven Songs by 23 Skidoo