Derek Jarman was an art student who graduated from the Slade School of Art at the University College, London, and became part of a social scene led by sculptor Andrew Logan in the 1970s.

Jarman's talent as a stage designer led to his first job in the film industry as production designer for Ken Russell's The Devils (1971). He would also work on Russell's Savage Messiah (1972) and began shooting his own experimental super-8mm shorts in 1972.

Jarman was also one of the first British film directors to shoot music videos before MTV launched in 1981 and popularized the format. In fact, Jarman filmed three Marianne Faithful videos in 1979 in support of her album - "Broken English," "Witches' Song," "The Ballad of Lucy Jordan." Among Jarman's most famous music videos are three featuring The Smiths, prior to Morrissey leaving the group - "The Queen Is Dead," "Panic," and "Ask." He also directed music videos for Throbbing Gristle, Marc Almond and the Pet Shop Boys.

Jordan, the King's Road shopgirl whose fashion sense expressed the aesthetics of the emerging punk movement, had briefly appeared in Derek Jarman's Sebastiane (1976) as Mammea Morgana, the famous prostitute who 'has slept her way from Bath to Rome.'

Helen Wellington-Lloyd, who appears in the first scene of Jubilee accompanied by some huge hunting dogs, was a close friend of Malcolm McLaren and a constant presence in the London punk scene. She plays a major part in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980).

John Maybury, an assistant costume designer/set decorator on the film, was a film student who was hired after Jarman met him at a Siouxsie and the Banshees concert. He was assisted in some of his chores by Kenny Morris, the drummer for Siouxsie's band.

Production assistant Lee Drysdale went on to play a bit part in Empire State [1987] before becoming a screenwriter (Body Contact [1987], Sweet Nothing [1996]) and director (Leather Jackets, [1992]). He lived with Bridget Fonda from 1986-1989 and she also played the female lead in Leather Jackets.

Ian Charleson, who is best known for his role as athlete Eric Liddell in Chariots of Fire (1981), also appeared in Gandhi (1982) and Dario Argento's Opera (1987). He died of AIDS-related causes in January of 1990.

Jarman would occasionally appear as an actor in the works of others such as Ron Peck's Nighthawks (1978), one of the first commercial films to emerge from London's gay underground scene, and David Lewis's Dead Cat (1989).br>
Jarman's film War Requiem (1989) marked the final screen appearance of Laurence Olivier.

By the time Jarman made Blue (1993) he was blind and dying from AIDS-related complications. He would live long enough to complete his final film Glitterbug (1994), a one-hour compilation of super 8 footage of friends and companions set to the music of Brian Eno. He died on February 19, 1994.

The primary instigators of violence in Jubilee are women, an obvious influence of Valerie Solanas who shot and almost killed Andy Warhol. Her notorious SCUM (Society to Cut Up Men) manifesto was read by Jarman prior to filming.

Jarman defended the scenes of violence that occur in Jubilee when he was interviewed by Clive Hodgson for program notes for a National Film Theatre screening of the film: "Those people were posturing violence, they were singing about it, they were writing violent things, but one knows that when it actually happens - and it happens to you - you can have sung about it forever, but it is going to be a completely different thing. This was what I wanted very much to underline in the film, because there was a climate of intellectual violence - 'Dada' violence - and that sort of thing can very easily become the forerunner of the real thing."

In Jubilee, the Amyl Nitrite character (played by Jordan) reveals that her heroine is Myra Hindley. The latter was a famous serial killer who was arrested with her partner Ian Brady for the infamous "Moors Murders" between 1963 and 1965 in which three children and two teenagers were abducted, sexually abused and killed. Her prison mug shot appeared in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle and she was portrayed by Samantha Morton in the 2006 TV movie Longford starring Jim Broadbent in the title role.

Amy Nitrite also admits in an opening scene that her favorite song is "Don't Dream It, Be It" which, of course, was written for The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) by Jordan's co-star Richard O'Brien.

Vivienne Westwood, whose Chelsea store was the mecca of punk fashion, hated Jubilee and created a t-shirt which sported a negative full length critique of the film.

Jubilee was the first of Jarman's films to reference the Elizabethan period and specifically John Dee, the noted English mathematician, astrologer and consultant to Queen Elizabeth I. The director would return to this period again in his films In the Shadow of the Sun (1980), The Tempest (1979), The Angelic Conversation (1985) and Edward II (1991).

Jubilee features Jarman's jarring use, in a visual medium, of the written word, a device he would employ more extensively in his later paintings where comments in the form of graffiti such as "Dead Sexy" would be scrawled over abstract colours.

Jubilee, along with Julien Temple's two films about the Sex Pistols, The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980) and The Filth and the Fury (2000), Jack Hazan and David Mingay's Rude Boy (1980), Lech Kowalski's D.O.A. (1980) and Out of the Blue (1980), directed by and starring Dennis Hopper, are considered the core films that best express the punk movement's sensibilities and restless spirit.

Compiled by Jeff Stafford

SOURCES:
Derek Jarman by Tony Peake
Derek Jarman by Rowland Wyner
Derek Jarman: Dreams of England by Michael O'Pray
Midnight Movies by J. Hoberman and Jonathan Rosenbaum
The Criterion Collection DVD liner notes
IMDB