The Angelic Conversation
Derek Jarman, GB 1985; Screenplay: Derek Jarman based on the sonnets of William Shakespeare; Cinematography: Derek Jarman, James Mackay; Editing: Cerith Wyn Evans, Peter Cartwright; Music: Coil (John Balance, Peter Christopherson, Stephen E. Thrower); Voice: Judi Dench. DCP (from Super 8), color and bw, 78 min. EnglishJudi Dench reciting 14 Shakespeare poems sounds like a recipe for an eminently respectable BBC Radio production. But Jarman's film has been dubbed "the purest and greatest of his experimental works." It is a non-narrative exploration of desire told through distorted, exaggerated visuals (8mm blown up to 35mm). Featuring an ethereal electronic soundtrack of music and field recordings by the band Coil, a series of elliptical episodes shows young men wandering rubbly terrain and enacting esoteric rituals. Sensually layered imagery – sometimes presented via stop-motion or frame-by-frame, and often with mythological association – accumulates into a quiet frenzy of abstraction. There are fights and embraces, unbridled physicality, passionate celebrations of the male form – all unified by Dame Judi's delivery of the Sonnets, perhaps still the greatest romantic poems written by one man to another. (N.Y.)
Introduced by James Mckay on March 20, 2026