This delightful if darkness-tinged documentary is comprised of footage shot by then not yet fully-fledged cameraman Seamus McGarvey (who went on to be DP for Atonement and The Hours among other features) on the set of Derek Jarman‘s 1991 adaptation of Edward II. For reasons not explained here, McGarvey’s material was left sitting in a cupboard for 30-odd years, unedited into the making-of documentary it was meant to be, even after Jarman’s death from AIDS-related illness not long after Edward II came out.
But maybe all things happen for a reason because now, thanks to young British director Theo Rollason and their team, the original footage gets to be part of a larger documentary. Filled out with vintage archive that supplements the portrait built here of the irrepressibly charming Jarman and his highly talented team of collaborators, this easily tallies up as more than the sum of its parts. It’s also guaranteed to induce swooning nostalgia in those who remember queer life, London and the filmmaking scene thereof in the early 1990s. Those too young, like Rollason, to have lived through those thrilling if dangerous times will have to contend with the complicated jealousy this will induce. And hopefully take away sadly timely history lessons about the necessity of resisting despotic, homophobic authoritarians, especially if you can do it with men dressed as nuns.
