Jubilee (1977)

Jubilee (1977)

Film Director: Derek Jarman

Running time: 1hr 45mins

Starring: Jenny Runacre, Jordan, Little Neil, Toyah Willcox

"Director Derek Jarman's controversial portray early British Punk, which imagines Elizabeth 1st paying a visit to the future with the aid of an astrologer and Shakespearean fairy 'Ariel.' Overshooting the present, she finds herself in a land of chaos and decay where punks inherited earth."
Jubilee is an absurd, violent and highly colourful dark comedy as a tribute to British Punk. the unconventional vision from Jarman makes this a true avant-guard film using tracks from Siouxsie, Adam and the Ants, Banshees, Brian Eno and others with historical referencing. 'It focuses on 'anarchistic fury, fashion and dissent of the late 1970s England,' in a form of postmodern fairytale. The films shows 1578 Queen Elizabeth 1st asking the court magician to give her a vision of'the shadow of her time.' The angel, who is not a fictional angel but an androgynous, Gothic vision transports her to Great Britain in the future where civilization has stopped and the Punks have taken over. In this vision society changed and the rowdy violent Punks had full control. Stereotypes were formed of the Queens sadistic ego- Bod, historian- Amyl Nitrate, pyromaniac Mad, ex-obsessed actress Crab and incestuous brothers Shinx and Angel. The films is chaos and focuses on the havoc these characters wreck on society wanting media attention , mirroring the punk and Sex Pistol craze during the 70s. It was made during the year of Queen Elizabeth's 2nd Silver Jubilee as a comical stab at hierarchy of the time. References such as the pucks owning Buckingham Palace made a continuous point made about the queen and the time.

We did not find this film particularly interesting or relevant to our film and concept, but is all valuable experience in engaging with film and the production behind films, which i feel will help improve our film through increasing our awareness and knowledge. The use of graffiti slogans was not only in keeping with the times but as part of the storytelling. One read When desires become reality... you don't need fantasy or art... "It mirrored the concept of the film, and is a possible idea to use devices such as this to portray a message without making it visible when producing our film. The filming had a 'collage' feel where the cut points were used to jump through time and flick from past to present.
Jarman' s creation using overlapping images and obvious cut-points was completely relevant to how we wish to present our film as it is a designers Promo. We want to overlap imagery and use effects such as fading scenes and have dramatic cut points- to jump from one scene to the next to generate an 'art vibe' and is a necessity to out concept. In an earlier post i made a blog of a key scenes in this film which we felt was extremely relavant to what we want to achieve in our film, to get the full effect a film clip has been posted in-place of a still, to show the progression on filming that we want to use. The scene started with a simple setting focusing on a jewelery box, the camera then zoomed in on the plastic ballerina which was circling on camera, before jumping to actual footage of a ballerina mimicking the movements of the jewelery box. Behind her naked actors have been masked by the overlapped footage of the ballerina dancing in theforeground. The music and filming is then sped up to generate an erratic and surreal piece of film which matches the chaos of Great Britain taken over by the Punks. The footage, in my opinion was really random, and jumpy, but with the dramatised make-up and the role reversal concept it all worked together. Obviously our film is on a completely different concept with a different context, but moments in this film were inspirational, and captured the feel we want our film to give out.
Another key element in this film was the camera 'zooming' into the characters eyes for dramatic effect, it gives the impression to the audience of the character having a realisation or it is used as an affect to give the impression of looking into the characters past through their eyes. It is a device that can be used to jump scenes without the context of the filming being altered. This is something we wanted to use in our film, therfore suggesting this film in places, is good reference material.