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Features
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A Pair of Punk Pioneers
Bursting onto the scene just ahead of the launch of a certain film festival in Utah, late artist Derek Jarman and 60-year-old rocker Patti Smith are now belatedly infusing Sundance with their spirit.
Monday, January 21, 2008 at 9:20 AM
By Pam Grady
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Jeff Vespa/WireImage.com
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Patti Smith with her documentary director Steven Sebring
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In many ways, the late experimental filmmaker and artist Derek Jarman and musician-poet-artist Patti Smith are cut from the same artistic cloth.
Both came to prominence in the mid-1970’s: Smith breaking out in 1975 with her seminal album “Horses,” Jarman with 1976's Sebastiane and 1977's Jubilee. Both were pioneers of the burgeoning punk movement. AIDS touched both, killing Jarman in 1994 and Smith's friend and one-time lover photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in 1989. And now both are sharing the spotlight at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival as the subjects of moving and celebratory documentaries, Isaac Julien's Derek and Steven Sebring's Patti Smith: Dream of Life.
The spirit of collaboration hovers over both films. In the case of Dream of Life, the partnership between filmmaker and subject is direct. Sebring and Smith met on a Spin photo shoot in 1995 shortly after her husband, fellow musician Fred "Sonic" Smith, passed away. The Dream of Life project began shortly thereafter. Sebring filmed Smith for 11 years, in quiet moments at home, where she simply talks about her life, and in raging moments on stage, where the fire she first demonstrated on stage more than three decades ago remains undiminished.
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Jason LaVeris/WireImage.com
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Derek director Isaac Julien
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Non-linear and punctuated by Smith's music, a multi-faceted portrait of the artist emerges as artist, mother, daughter, lover and wife. In voiceover, she describes life as a combination of fate and series of lucky and unlucky accidents and the viewer is made privy to what has combined to make her life: her great love, cut much too short, with Fred; her pride in her children who grow up on screen; her long, deep friendship with the late photographer Robert Mapplethorpe; her affection for Beat writers William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Gregory Corso; her ongoing friendship with one-time lover, playwright Sam Shepard. It was Shepard who gave Smith her first guitar in 1971, a 1931 Gibson and he shows up in the film, sharing a couple of songs in Smith's apartment.
Eleven years might sound like a long time to work on one project, but it is an advantage to Dream of Life. For one thing, it allows for a fully developed sense of its subject to emerge. For another, the concert footage captures Smith's re-emergence as a musician after her years of semi-retirement in Detroit in all of its glorious vitality. And worth the price of admission alone is a beautiful moment of Smith riding in a car, the radio blaring, singing "Stardust" along with Nat King Cole.
In an odd way, Julien's Derek is similarly collaborative. Even though Jarman died 14 years ago, he left behind a 14-hour video interview done in 1990 with producer Colin MacCabe. With his impending death in mind, the interview is far ranging covering his life, his art, and his illness.
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The Kobal Collection/WireImage.com
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Derek Jarman, circa 1991
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Julien intersperses snippets throughout, embroidering the conversation with excerpts from Jarman's work, including early Super 8 projects, his garden at his home in Dungeness and his painting, in addition to his more well-known features such as Sebastiane, Jubilee, Caravaggio, The Tempest, Edward II and Blue. Narrating from a letter she wrote to Jarman in 2002 and appearing on screen as she moves through London and Dungeness is another of Jarman's close friends and collaborators, Tilda Swinton.
Julien and Swinton's affection for Jarman is evident in every frame of Derek and so is something else and that is the enormous talent that was lost when this pioneer of queer cinema left the frame so early. In the interview, Jarman asserts that he would like to simply disappear in death, taking his art along with him.
Swinton in her letter posits that in a way that is exactly what happened. Jarman is not generally taught in most film schools. Most rep houses are closed. His films never had wide distribution even when he was alive. Many people have no idea that these films exist even as they search for something more challenging than the latest Hollywood blockbuster.
Derek is an attempt to bring Jarman back into the light. It is a beautiful film. The excerpts from Jarman's film are well chosen. Swinton's affection for her friend is poignantly expressed in her letter. Best of all is Jarman himself, thoughtful, amiable, witty, and though facing death, bristling with life.
Patti Smith: Dream of Life and Derek are wonderful examinations of the artistic life. To see them together in the form of Sundance Film Festival world premieres is a rare treat and a wonderful reminder of what this event is all about.
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