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Two documentaries, one made for tv and both, I suspect, projected DVDs, on gay icons - and with a nice symmetry one is a Black man on a White man and the other was a White on a Black.
XXIX: Isaac Julien, Derek (2008)
In a late interview, artist, filmmaker, gay activist, gardener and saint Derek Jarman said that he would be happy to disappear when he died, with all his films fading away. This feels like what happened - after a couple of anniversaries marked by BBC2 and Channel 4, the compilation of Glitterball and a retrospective (I think at the Hayword), there seems to have been little after life. Some of the films are on DVD, but others seem to have vanished into thin air - like his artistic rival Peter Greenaway who we used to be bothered about at about the same period.
Isaac Julien has constructed a documentary around a late interview conducted by Colin MacCabe, for showing on Film4 and at a Serpentine exhibition (of which more, sooner or later). He edits together Jarman talking - always entertaining, occasionally outrageous - with clips from the feature films and the Super8 work, and contemporary footage of favoured actress Tilda Swinton and her reading of a letter she wrote to Derek after his death. As it is, it is a film from an admirer to the admired, a hagiography that allows no critical distance.
I don't want this to be I Heart Derek or The One Hundred Top Derek Jarman Moments, with a T4 presenter rhapsodising over the sex scene in The Last of England, but time has passed and it's time for reappraisal. There were plenty of biographies during his life, and some after his death, so I don't think I learned anything new, or saw any footage I've nhot seen somewhere along the line.
I think the moment was most obvious when Derek said there were only two independent films made in Britain, Sebastiane and Jubilee. Independent in what sense? There hasn't really been a studio system in Britain since the 1960s, and even then British filmakers weren't tied in the same way that Americans were in Hollywood. Independent of broadcasters? Yes, perhaps. But it needed context.
In the end it was, of course, of love letter. A good introduction, but only just getting to know Derek.
XXX: Fred Barney Taylor, The Polymath, or the Life and Opinions of Samuel R. Delany, Gentleman (2007)
Another documentary, watched with Roger Luckhurst, and in the same auditorium as![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fjm and rozk.
Samuel R. Delany has had sex with over 50,000 people. That's fifty thousand. Sex. Fifty thousand partners. That's several a day. I don't know about your stamina, but there was the Delany novel in which a character goes for the seventh orgasm of the day.
It's sort of surprising to have time to be a polymath when shagging quite so frequently, but perhaps he multi-tasks. He's a writer, an attender of porn theatres, a lecturer and an intellectual, and was a prodigee - and all of this despite being black in America in the second half of the twentieth century.
(He didn't specify 50,000 orgasms, but partners. Sometimes it is better to give than to receive)
His father was the first Black undertaker in New York (Harlem specifically) and his aunts were active in civil rights in the early twentieth century and his grandfather was a bishop. In other words, he grew up in a situation where he stood a better chance at success than many - which is not to deny that it must have been difficult at times.
(When he says 50,000, there may be some overlap and repeats visits. It's not as if it's a situation in which names are exchanged. Just fluids.)
Again pretty the only voice is that of the central figure - again charming and seductive and clearly the sort of figure you point a camera at and hope you can catch a soundbyte in the edit. He discusses going one place for sex in the morning, then a second for an afternoon constitutional, and then a third to wind down with in the evening. All the while his wife is at work, and comes home to dinner on the table. The wife is Marilyn Hacker - and if you haven't read any of her poetry go away and put this right, right now - here, here, here, here or here - and was as far as I recall aware and even complicit in the practice rather than being a cuckold. She's later to come out herself, although I don't recall this being an issue in Delany's autobiographies. There's no mention of the daughter they later shared.
(50,000. Think of that as a ball park figure.)
There were two other voices - in addition to snippets froma Delany symposium. Walter Mosley calls him the best living American writer, irrespective of race and genre. Jonathan Latham raves, proving he doesn't just like Philip K. Dick. But again, context, schmontext. We aren't actually told that most of Delany's output is sf (although I guess it's twenty years years the last original sf novel) and fantasy - not just porn.
(huh huh. He said ball park.)
I think the documentary maker - who easily has enough material for another half dozen documentaries - clearly got seduced by the prowess of his subject, and found it easier to deal with that than talking seriously about sf, comics, or poststructuralism. I'm not sure how much sense it would make to someone who didn't know his work - but whether they'd go to see it is a moot point. There is clearly much to add.
(Nick Clegg has a lot of catching up to do.)
Totals: 30 [Cinema: 12; DVD: 17; TV: 1]
XXIX: Isaac Julien, Derek (2008)
In a late interview, artist, filmmaker, gay activist, gardener and saint Derek Jarman said that he would be happy to disappear when he died, with all his films fading away. This feels like what happened - after a couple of anniversaries marked by BBC2 and Channel 4, the compilation of Glitterball and a retrospective (I think at the Hayword), there seems to have been little after life. Some of the films are on DVD, but others seem to have vanished into thin air - like his artistic rival Peter Greenaway who we used to be bothered about at about the same period.
Isaac Julien has constructed a documentary around a late interview conducted by Colin MacCabe, for showing on Film4 and at a Serpentine exhibition (of which more, sooner or later). He edits together Jarman talking - always entertaining, occasionally outrageous - with clips from the feature films and the Super8 work, and contemporary footage of favoured actress Tilda Swinton and her reading of a letter she wrote to Derek after his death. As it is, it is a film from an admirer to the admired, a hagiography that allows no critical distance.
I don't want this to be I Heart Derek or The One Hundred Top Derek Jarman Moments, with a T4 presenter rhapsodising over the sex scene in The Last of England, but time has passed and it's time for reappraisal. There were plenty of biographies during his life, and some after his death, so I don't think I learned anything new, or saw any footage I've nhot seen somewhere along the line.
I think the moment was most obvious when Derek said there were only two independent films made in Britain, Sebastiane and Jubilee. Independent in what sense? There hasn't really been a studio system in Britain since the 1960s, and even then British filmakers weren't tied in the same way that Americans were in Hollywood. Independent of broadcasters? Yes, perhaps. But it needed context.
In the end it was, of course, of love letter. A good introduction, but only just getting to know Derek.
XXX: Fred Barney Taylor, The Polymath, or the Life and Opinions of Samuel R. Delany, Gentleman (2007)
Another documentary, watched with Roger Luckhurst, and in the same auditorium as
fjm and rozk.Samuel R. Delany has had sex with over 50,000 people. That's fifty thousand. Sex. Fifty thousand partners. That's several a day. I don't know about your stamina, but there was the Delany novel in which a character goes for the seventh orgasm of the day.
It's sort of surprising to have time to be a polymath when shagging quite so frequently, but perhaps he multi-tasks. He's a writer, an attender of porn theatres, a lecturer and an intellectual, and was a prodigee - and all of this despite being black in America in the second half of the twentieth century.
(He didn't specify 50,000 orgasms, but partners. Sometimes it is better to give than to receive)
His father was the first Black undertaker in New York (Harlem specifically) and his aunts were active in civil rights in the early twentieth century and his grandfather was a bishop. In other words, he grew up in a situation where he stood a better chance at success than many - which is not to deny that it must have been difficult at times.
(When he says 50,000, there may be some overlap and repeats visits. It's not as if it's a situation in which names are exchanged. Just fluids.)
Again pretty the only voice is that of the central figure - again charming and seductive and clearly the sort of figure you point a camera at and hope you can catch a soundbyte in the edit. He discusses going one place for sex in the morning, then a second for an afternoon constitutional, and then a third to wind down with in the evening. All the while his wife is at work, and comes home to dinner on the table. The wife is Marilyn Hacker - and if you haven't read any of her poetry go away and put this right, right now - here, here, here, here or here - and was as far as I recall aware and even complicit in the practice rather than being a cuckold. She's later to come out herself, although I don't recall this being an issue in Delany's autobiographies. There's no mention of the daughter they later shared.
(50,000. Think of that as a ball park figure.)
There were two other voices - in addition to snippets froma Delany symposium. Walter Mosley calls him the best living American writer, irrespective of race and genre. Jonathan Latham raves, proving he doesn't just like Philip K. Dick. But again, context, schmontext. We aren't actually told that most of Delany's output is sf (although I guess it's twenty years years the last original sf novel) and fantasy - not just porn.
(huh huh. He said ball park.)
I think the documentary maker - who easily has enough material for another half dozen documentaries - clearly got seduced by the prowess of his subject, and found it easier to deal with that than talking seriously about sf, comics, or poststructuralism. I'm not sure how much sense it would make to someone who didn't know his work - but whether they'd go to see it is a moot point. There is clearly much to add.
(Nick Clegg has a lot of catching up to do.)
Totals: 30 [Cinema: 12; DVD: 17; TV: 1]
