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Edward II

Screening on Film
Directed by Derek Jarman.
With Jody Graber, Tilda Swinton, Nigel Terry.
UK, 1991, 35mm, color, 90 min.

The late British artist and filmmaker Derek Jarman (Caravaggio, The Last of England) created works of both great beauty and controversy. His most commercially successful film, Edward II, is an adaptation of Christopher Marlowe’s play that purists might consider shocking. Moving the work’s latent homosexual subtext to the forefront, Jarman blends the story of the man crowned King of England with contemporary depictions of homosexual repression and gay activism, as Edward is dethroned for taking a male lover. Visually striking, dramatically convincing, and with its gay politics firmly grounded in English history and theater, Edward II was one of Jarman’s final films and a ringing condemnation of societal homophobia.

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