Arena — Season 1, Episode 400: Derek Jarman - a Portrait
Documentary • 90 min • 3 seasons, 689 episodes • ★ 7.2/10
Episode synopsis
Derek Jarman is a uniquely British outsider: a painter, film-maker and a self-appointed enfant terrible with a paradoxical affection for tradition. He makes films as a painter or poet, rather than as a conventional film-maker; his subject matter includes Shakespeare's Tempest, a critique of Great Britain in Jubilee year and Sebastiane, an openly gay interpretation of the saint's martyrdom. The programme includes clips from all his work, including his latest film, The Garden.
About Arena
Arena is a British television documentary series, made and broadcast by the BBC. Voted by leading TV executives in Broadcast as one of the top 50 most influential programmes of all time, it has run since 1 October 1975 with over five hundred episodes made, directed by the likes of Martin Scorsese, Alan Yentob, Roly Keating, Frederick Baker, Volker Schlondorff and Vikram Jayanti. Arena's subjects are a roll-call of the world's best known cultural figures from the 20th and 21st centuries, from singers Bob Dylan and Amy Winehouse to academics Edward Said and Eric Hobsbawm, from writers Jean Genet and V S Naipaul to artists Francis Bacon and Louise Bourgeois. The current series editor is Anthony Wall.