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Midlands Spotlight – Derby Film Festival 2018

The Derby Film Festival is back for its fifth edition taking place from 4th – 13th May 2018 and local audiences can expect another successful array of previews, classic films from the archive and a weekend dedicated to genres beyond the mainstream.

DFF are scouring the globe to find the best in world cinema as well as bringing some special guests to talk about their experiences in the film industry. As ever they’ll be home to the Five Lamps 24 hour film challenge 24/5, the contest to make a 3 minute film in 24 hours.

Over the opening weekend of Derby Film Festival, they also launch Paracinema Weekend, a long weekend dedicated to films and genres outside the mainstream. Events at Paracinema include an on-stage conversation with actress Toyah Willcox and a screening of Nosferatu in the grand surroundings of Derby Cathedral.

• Continue reading at Midlands Movies. Further info on Derby Film Festival and the Paracinema Festival 2018 here.

Following its limited cinema release you can soon watch Lies We Tell, in which Toyah has a small role, from the comfort of your own home. The film is available to buy on DVD and Blu-ray, as well as on Digital HD from 2nd April.

Here’s where:

iTunes
Amazon
Google Play
Microsoft
Sky Store
TalkTalk TV
BT
Vubiquity (EirCom)
Rakuten TV
Sony

• Browse all of Dreamscape’s previous Lies We Tell news here.

Blu-ray: Derek Jarman Collection, Vol One 1972-1986

Voyage through an alchemical universe: the magical realm of a flawed English genius

This BFI boxset of Derek Jarman films from the first phase of his career, brilliantly curated by William Fowler, is an exemplary package: a treasure trove of extras accompanies his first six features, here presented in re-mastered form, and a thorough, well-illustrated and thought-provoking 80-page booklet with extensive material about the films and a wealth of essays.

The collection makes it possible to follow the evolution of Jarman as a film-maker, always riding the wave of creative and mould-breaking adventure, from the mysteries of In the Shadow of the Sun (1981), a film that built on much of Jarman’s super-8mm footage from the 1970s, the controversial Sebastiane (1976), through to the explosive punk-inspired politics of Jubilee (1978), followed by The Tempest (1979), surely one of the best adaptations of Shakespeare on film, the avant-garde rigour and homo-erotic delirium of The Angelic Conversation (1985), and the assured and more straightforward account of the rebellious life of the painter Caravaggio.

• Continue reading at The Arts Desk. Read further info on this release here.

Jubilee was on release in cinemas this week & month forty years ago in 1978 after premiering in London on 28 February. (Image © Official Toyah)

Over the May Bank Holiday weekend, QUAD launches the first edition of Paracinema, a festival dedicated to films and genres outside of the mainstream. Expect a steady diet of horror, sci-fi and fantasy but in addition to this Paracinema will be exploring other genres outside the mainstream with special guests, previews and talks on a whole range of unusual genres and subgenres.

Toyah Willcox In Conversation
Saturday 5th May at 5:00pm

It is hard to imagine a more perfect guest for the eclectic nature of Paracinema than Toyah Willcox. After gaining positive notices for her debut in the television play Glitter in 1976, Toyah then played the anarchic role of Mad in Derek Jarman’s seminal punk film Jubilee . From there she went on to appear alongside Katherine Hepburn in the TV movie The Corn Is Green, in the mod classic Quadrophenia as Monkey and reteamed with Jarman in his Shakespeare adaptation The Tempest. Genre fans should note her role in the John Mills starring Quatermass series, BBC TV Movie Dr Jeykll and Mr Hyde and Tales Of The Unexpected. Since that early-mid 80s boom, Toyah has gone to appear as Miss Scarlett in the Cluedo TV Series, as Billie Piper’s mum in The Secret Diary Of A Call Girl, and in children’s TV series The Ink Thief. Recently she appeared in the genre defying Aaaaaaaah! by director Steve Oram and alongside Gabriel Byrne and Harvey Keitel in Lies We Tell.

We are excited to welcome Toyah to Paracinema for an on-stage discussion of her screen career.

• Continue reading at Derby QUAD. Visit Toyah’s 2018 Gig Diary at toyahwillcox.com for all confirmed dates and appearances.

Over the May Bank Holiday weekend, we launch the first edition of Paracinema, a festival dedicated to films and genres outside of the mainstream. Expect a steady diet of horror, sci-fi and fantasy but also we’ll be exploring other genres outside the mainstream with special guests, previews and talks on a whole range of unusual genres and subgenres.

Confirmed Guests and Previews

Special Guest – Toyah Willcox. We are delighted to be welcoming actress and pop star Toyah Willcox to Paracinema and Derby Film Festival on Saturday 5th May to talk about her career appearing in classics like Derek Jarman’s Jubilee, The Tempest and the mod classic Quadrophenia as well as juggling a hugely successful pop career.

• Continue reading at Derby Quad. Visit the Derby Film Festival 2018 website here.

How Jubilee Became the Greatest Punk Film of All Time

Today, Derek Jarman’s punk classic turns 40 – to celebrate, we track its journey from notoriety to immortality

“Punks were in the audience screaming ‘THIS AIN’T PUNK!’ and ‘WHAT A LOAD OF BOLLOCKS!’ and ‘SHIT!’” That’s how Jayne County recalled the raucous atmosphere at the premiere of Jubilee, Derek Jarman’s dark sci-fi reckoning with a dystopian England, in an interview from 2011.

County, a veteran of the New York punk scene who cameos in the film, was no more charitable in his own assessment of Jarman’s vision, released in cinemas 40 years ago this month. “Wasted celluloid”, she called it – though the scene she starred in wasn’t half bad, naturally.

• Continue reading at Another Man.

Toyah Willcox to visit the region ahead of starring in film about Darlington man’s life

Toyah Willcox is preparing to play the mother of a North-East football fan in a movie about his life.

The popular musician and actor will visit the region next month to attend a showcase event hosted by the team behind Give Them Wings, an upcoming feature film about Darlington man Paul Hodgson.

Ms Willcox is the latest cast member announced for the project, which tells the story of Mr Hodgson’s battle with childhood meningitis, which left him unable to move or speak. She will join a team including award-winning director Sean Cronin and Holby City actor Bill Fellows in bringing the PIMM Productions venture to the big screen.

• Continue reading at The Northern Echo.

Jubilee celebrates its 40th with a DVD & Blu-ray Anniversary Edition of Derek Jarman’s cult classic. The 2-disc set will be released on 18th June 2018.

The mythological past and bleak future converge on the sparse, grey streets of London in this cult classic of the punk era.

Queen Elizabeth 1 and her occult aide Dr John Dee (brilliantly played by Jenny Runacre and Richard O’Brien, respectively) travel into the future, encountering the megalomania of big business as well as gangs of violent, marauding killers.  Director Derek Jarman doesn’t spare the shocks while electrifying punk rock numbers are delivered by Jayne County and Adam Ant

Newly available as a Dual Format Edition for the very first time, the film is a 2K remaster from the original camera negatives, and comes bolstered by an extensive array of extras.

Special Features:
• Presented in High Definition and Standard Definition
• A Message from the Temple (1981, 5 mins)
• Toyah Willcox: Being Mad (2014, 8 mins): The singer and actress looks back on her role in Jubilee
• Jordan remembers Jubilee (2018): Punk icon Jordan looks back on her friendship with Derek Jarman and the making of Jubilee
• Lee Drysdale remembers Jubilee (2018): Derek Jarman’s friend and, later collaborator Lee Drysdale recalls his unconventional involvement in the making of Jubilee
• Jubilee image gallery
• Fully illustrated booklet with writing on the film by Will Fowler, an original review and full film credits

1978 | colour | 106 minutes | 1 x BD50, Region B | 1 x DVD9, Region 2 | Cert 18

• Further info/Pre-order at Amazon.

The BFI have announced details of a long-awaited collection of the films of Derek Jarman, to be released on Blu-Ray this spring. Jarman Volume One: 1972-1986 will be a limited-edition, five disc box set, available from 26th March 2018 – more info/pre-order at Amazon.

Derek Jarman Volume One: 1972-1986
5-disc Limited Edition Blu-ray box set

Jarman’s multi-faceted work is inspirational in its fearlessness, yet remains touchingly personal. The dynamism of these features evokes comparison with the bold romanticism of directors like Ken Russell (an early champion) and Michael Powell, as well as artists Paul Nash and John Piper. But Jarman was also a subversive force in film. Beginning with his psychedelic debut feature, In the Shadow of the Sun (1972-1974), then came the provocative Jubilee (1978), the evocative Shakespeare adaptation The Tempest (1979) and The Angelic Conversation (1985), in which he invoked Elizabethan occultist Dr John Dee and explored alchemical imagery, a subject in which he was well versed. In Sebastiane (1976) and Caravaggio (1986) he revived key gay and homo-erotic figures from the past with edgy and unmistakable style.

Derek Jarman’s first six feature films have all been newly scanned at 2K from original film elements and are presented in this lavish box set alongside an exciting array of new and archival extras drawn from Jarman’s archive of workbooks and papers held in BFI Special Collections. Newly interviewed exclusively for this box set are some of the people who worked on these films; punk legend Jordan, producer and filmmaker Don Boyd, production designer Christopher Hobbs and artist filmmaker John Scarlett-Davis.

Special Features

• All films presented in High Definition for the first time in the UK
• Sebastiane: A Work in Progress (c.1975): newly remastered from 16mm film elements held by the BFI National Archive, this sadly incomplete early black and white work-print of Sebastiane differs significantly from the finished film. This previously unseen alternate edit assembled in a different order, featuring a different soundtrack was never subtitled or released
• The Making of Sebastiane (Derek Jarman & Hugh Smith, 1975): previously unseen Super 8 footage shot on location in Sardiniai
• Jazz Calendar (1968): a rarely screened documentary record of the 1968 ballet by Frederick Ashton, performed by The Royal Ballet at the Royal Opera House, for which Jarman designed sets and costumes
• Message from the Temple (1981)
• TG: Psychic Rally in Heaven (1981)
• Pirate Tape (WS Burroughs Film) (1982)
• Toyah Willcox: Being Mad (2014); the singer and actress looks back on her role in Jubilee
• Jordan remembers Jubilee (2018): punk icon Jordan looks back on her friendship with Derek Jarman and the making of Jubilee
• Stormy Weather: The Magic Behind The Tempest (2016): Toyah Willcox and Stuart Hopps share their memories of working on Derek Jarman’s 1979 production of The Tempest
• Don Boyd remembers The Tempest (2018): Producer and filmmaker Don Boyd remembers the production, release and critical reception of The Tempest
• A Meeting of Minds: Christopher Hobbs on collaborating with Derek Jarman (2018): production designer Christopher Hobbs looks back on his long and fruitfully creative friendship with Derek Jarman
• Fully illustrated 80-page book with new writing on the film, contemporary reviews and full film credits
• …plus lots more

Grieve The Capital: Derek Jarman’s Jubilee Turns 40

Derek Jarman’s film of visionary alchemy and edgeland punks now tells of a time before the gentrification of the capital when occulture and subculture sat side-by-side, says Adam Scovell

Released in Elizabeth II’s silver jubilee year of 1978 as a provocation seemingly towards just about everyone, it’s little wonder Derek Jarman’s second feature film, Jubilee, caused such an uproar. The Queen herself is mugged and killed for her crown early on in a Deptford edgeland, the punk movement still then raging over London is unconsciously sent up by some of the very people who were part of it, and the raw mixture of violence, conservative nostalgia, swipes at Catholicism and copious nudity makes it as anarchic as anything the director made afterwards.

Amongst this incredibly heady concoction of both successful and failed attempts at creating a feasible narrative world, however, sits something far more essential; a time-capsule of a period in London’s history when subcultures grew overtly and naturally due to the city’s many affordable, derelict areas.

The film begins with Elizabeth I (Jenny Runacre) and her alchemist, Dr. John Dee (Richard O’Brien), who conjures forth Ariel (David Brandon), William Shakespeare’s magical being from The Tempest. Thanks to Ariel’s powers imbued into a crystal, the trio travel forward through the cascading years, from the sixteenth-century to a brutal, dystopian vision of 1970s London. The city is ravaged but alive, the streets housing violent groups of punk girl-gangs who fend off police harassment and cause mayhem. Prams are burning and people are killed whilst bands, including Adam And The Ants and Siouxsie And The Banshees, play endlessly on television. Ritual violence is spreading as is this new form of music, ready to be co-opted by financial maniacs to sell to a brainwashed youth; providing further wealth to buy up the newly empty Buckingham Palace and turn it into a recording studio. The film is perhaps more famous for its string of cameos: Adam Ant, The Slits smashing up a car, Toyah Willcox playing Mad and too many others to name. But it’s more than the sum of its pop-culture reference points.

• Continue reading at The Quietus.

Lies We Tell, Mitu Misra’s gritty Britflick starring Gabriel Byrne, Harvey Keitel, Mark Addy, Nicholas Farrell, Gina McKee, Toyah Willcox, Emily Atack, Sibylla Deen and Jan Uddin will be released in UK cinemas on Friday 2nd February 2018.

• Click on the promo poster below to view the trailer. Browse all of our Lies We Tell news here.

Jubilee: London Live: Monday 29th January: 2.30am
Jubilee: London Live: Wednesday 31st January: 2am
Queen Elizabeth I travels through time from 1578 to 1978, where she sees what has become of her once glorious kingdom: law and order have broken down and punks roam the streets. Director: Derek Jarman. Starring: Jenny Runacre,  Nell Campbell, Toyah Willcox, Hermine Demoriane, Ian Charleson, Karl Johnson.

NB: London Live is available on: Freeview 8, Sky 117, Virgin 159, YouView 8.

Quadrophenia: Film 4: New Years Day: 1.30am
The Who wrote and produced this energetic story of a young man disillusioned with his life in 1960s London. Phil Daniels excels as the alienated anti-hero Jimmy Cooper. Director: Franc Roddam. Starring: Phil Daniels, Leslie Ash, Toyah Willcox, Philip Davis, Mark Wingett, Sting, and Ray Winstone.

Aaaaaaaah! is airing again, mid-December, on Film4.

Check out our huuuuge Aaaaaaaah! news archive here or by clicking on the screenshots to the left.

Aaaaaaaah!: Film 4: Friday 15th December: 2.20am
Writer-director-star Steve Oram’s experimental satire is set in a parallel present in which, despite wearing clothing and developing advanced technology, mankind never attained the power of speech. Instead, people communicate in gestures and non-verbal vocalisms, ranging from grunts to whistles and growls. And this isn’t the only similarity to our great ape cousins, as social and sexual behaviour is closer to that of gorillas or bonobos and is completely shorn of social niceties. The film opens with a grieving alpha male and his companion ritually urinating on a photo of the dominant male’s wife to mark her loss. They then move through woodland and into London’s sprawling suburbs, intent on staking out new territory for themselves…

Starring: Jade Alexander, Julian Barratt, Missa Blue, Holli Dempsey, Marcus Dempsey, Noel Fielding, Toyah Willcox.

“She was Miranda in Derek Jarman’s 1979 film of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Today, Toyah is Queen Elizabeth I in a stage version of Jarman’s Jubilee. (She was also in the original 1978 film)”

Filmfear Interview Special: Film 4: Friday 8th December: 2.50am
Features interviews with the talent behind FilmFear 2017′s British premieres: actor-director Alice Lowe talks about Prevenge; actor-director Steve Oram talks about Aaaaaaaah! and A Dark Song; director Gareth Tunley and star Tom Meeten talk about The Ghoul; director Liam Gavin talks about A Dark Song; and director Nick Gillespie talks about Tank 432.

When your life’s a joke it’s time to stand up!

The story follows a college lecturer, Martin Dawson played by Nick Figgis and his hope to escape from obscurity by having a screenplay made into a film. We see his relationship with his ex-wife and children, his mistress and film agent along with his sometimesoverbearing parents. We witness his eventual breakdown during a cathartic rant on an open mic spot at a local comedy club in front of a packed house. During the performance we see flash backs to a memorable trip to Whitby with all the pathos and comic talent you could expect from Godber as our hero endures an insane weekend with his parents. We have a UK theatrical release scheduled for October2017.

Written by John Godber. Directed by Daniel Coll. Produced by John Danbury and Daniel Coll. Executive Producers: John Godber, Clive Waldron, Sir Rodney Walker and Paul Sewell. Director of Photography Dave Thorp.

With Nick Figgis, Toyah Willcox, Jane Thornton, John Godber, Amy Thompson, Ann Micklethwaite and Paul Lavers.

Original music by Phil Codd, Si Wright and Toyah Willcox.

• Showing at Harrogate Theatre on 8th February 2018. More info here. Visit the Last Laugh Twitter.

No future: Catherine Love reviews Chris Goode’s furiously intelligent take on the punk movie classic.

Punk is dead. Long live punk.

When director Derek Jarman released Jubilee in 1978, punk had already scaled its zenith and was starting to tumble down the other side. The Sex Pistols had just split. The controversy of ‘God Save The Queen’ had come and gone. Thatcher was lurking just beyond the horizon.

Chris Goode’s version – more of a playful wrestle with Jarman’s film than an adaptation of it – asks what punk means now, four decades after it had its moment. By the time I was aware of punk in the late 90s, it was already nostalgia. Now, in 2017, it’s distant yet present. It’s Johnny Rotten in butter adverts. It’s mohawks and safety pins at fancy dress parties. It’s the Sex Pistols on the radio.

Jarman’s film suggested that everyone would sell out in the end, and punk proved him right. That abandoning of revolutionary stances and evacuating of radical gestures is worried away at throughout Goode’s reimagining. His Jubilee is firmly located in the now – the year of Queen Elizabeth II’s uranium jubilee, according to protagonist Amyl Nitrite (queer performance artist Travis Alabanza) – and picks at contemporary scabs. Is there still any sort of resistance in nihilism at a time when the film’s defiant cry of “no future” feels more and more like a simple statement of truth?

• Continue reading at Exeunt Magazine.

Jubilee, originally a film by Derek Jarman released in 1978 is updated for the 21st century at The Royal Exchange, Manchester. Nigel Carr reports back for Louder Than War.

Denounced by Vivienne Westwood at the time of its original release in 1978 as failing to represent punk, Derek Jarman’s Jubilee was a social statement on the breakdown of modern society. Anarchy ruled, policemen got firebombed and Queen Elizabeth, transported from the sixteenth century by the occultist John Dee, surveyed a decaying dystopian, modern Britain.

Fast forward forty years and ‘nothing has changed’, ‘nothing has worked’. Gloriously narrated by Travis Alabanza’s Amyl Nitrate, the themes are brought bang up to date in a dense, visceral allegory of a still decaying Britain with references as disparate as Brexit, Grenfell – ‘Tower blocks are built to kill the poor’ and ‘Isis, Isis Isis!’

• Continue reading at Louder Than War.

The 1978 punk film Jubilee set out to shock with violence, nudity and strong language. Nearly 40 years later, the 2017 play features more of the same but shocks for a different reason.

Why is this? Well, thanks in no small part to social media, we’ve become immune. Numb to almost all of it. Punk’s original prophecies have been realised.

At Manchester’s Royal Exchange, ideas, beliefs and concepts are chillingly recited, followed by the angry cry that each “does not work” You can almost hear Johnny Rotten scowl “no future” somewhere in the distance.

Which bring us to Toyah Willcox, the link between old and new. Forty years on from playing pyromaniac Mad in the film, she presides over proceedings (and Derek Jarman’s legacy) as Queen Elizabeth I, surveying a broken Britain terrorised by a generation with no moral compass. Her presence adds just the right amount of gravitas and authenticity to a piece dominated by a young fearless cast.

Travis Alabanza is a charismatic, stand-out as Amyl Nitrate, MC of this horridly exhilarating circus, effortlessly drawing you in with a spiky blend of insults and charm. Comic lines are placed with precision. Despite the bleakness, there are laughs among the splinters. It’s a risky balancing act but the humour translates far more effectively here than it ever did in the cinema.

• Continue reading at Northern Soul.