This film screened on 14th December 2019.

In adapting Christopher Marlowe’s Elizabethan drama for the screen, Jarman forefronts the play’s homosexual themes, adding relevance through pointed anachronisms in the staging, mixing contemporary and medieval props and clothing. Jarman takes the plot, which revolves around the King’s (Steven Waddington) infatuation with Piers Gaveston (Andrew Tiernan), which proved to be his downfall, and renders it thrillingly modern – at one point Edward’s army are depicted as the contemporary gay rights activist group, OutRage! Edward II is often cited a key film of the New Queer Cinema cycle of the early 1990s, alongside My own Private Idaho, Young Soul Rebels and Poison.

Screening as part of IFI & IMMA: Derek Jarman December 3rd to 15th 2019. Click for more information.