The Garden + Q&A

Followed by a Q&A chaired by Dr Dominic Paterson, curator of Digging in Another Time: Derek Jarman’s Modern Nature at Hunterian Art Gallery. In May 1987, Derek Jarman bought Prospect Cottage on Dungeness. He planted an acclaimed garden there on its windswept shingle beach and in the shadow of the nearby nuclear power station. That same year, he met the great love of his life, Keith Collins. These two life events led eventually to The Garden, filmed around Prospect, and featuring Collins in a cast that also includes Jarman regulars like Tilda Swinton and Spencer Leigh. A quieter and more luminous, poetic film than The Last of England, in The Garden Dungeness stands as a kind of (queer) Eden in comparison to the fallen ruins of 1980s urban Britain. The Garden is nonetheless an uncompromising response the AIDS crisis. A series of allegorical dream sequences set New Testament imagery in the contemporary landscape and reflect on the hypocrisy of a homophobic Church. One of the films central images, of Collins lying in bed with another man, was replicated in Jarman’s 1989 installation at The Third Eye Centre, Glasgow. Screening as part of the Derek Jarman: Modern Nature on Film season, programmed in collaboration with The Hunterian, University of Glasgow, which is currently presenting an exhibition focused on Jarman’s work in painting, film, queer activism and writing. Digging in Another Time: Derek Jarman’s Modern Nature is at Hunterian Art Gallery until 4 May 2025.DramaPT1H28M12A2025-03-30

Tilda Swinton

Johnny Mills

Philip MacDonald

Derek Jarman

The Garden + Q&A"The Garden + Q&A"

Showtimes

March 30, 4:40 pm