I may have seen this before at the local cinematheque back in the 80s — but I’m not sure. Jarman did more than a couple of movies based on speeding up/slowing down old Super 8 films and editing them together with an interesting soundtrack… so this seems familiar, but not hugely so.

I wonder how they approached restoring this for the bluray… The movie (which is 35mm, I’m guessing) was composed from 8mm originals, I think? Which is super grainy, and there’s a lot of dust and stuff… but that was reproduced by Jarman deliberately, so you don’t want to edit that out. But you do want to get rid of the artefacts from the degraded 35mm print.

I guess you just er wing it?

This looks really good, though.

And it’s rather fascinating. Without the soundtrack by Throbbing Gristle, though, it would have been a very different film.

It’s… contemplative.

If I really did see this back when I was a student, I would have felt very cultured indeed — I mean, watching an abstract movie like this surely deserves a lot of cultural brownie points!

And I guess I still feel like that? But I do like this one anyway. Even if there are no bragging rights attached these days.

In the Shadow of the Sun. Derek Jarman. 1981. ⚄

Box sets from the BFI (the British Film Institute) are pretty interesting — that is, they have access to a lot of odds and ends that even outfits like Criterion don’t. For one, they have their own archives, where a lot of British film stuff has been deposited. And they also have access to the BBC archives, where there’s a lot of stuff, too.

So you get stuff like this: It’s an incomplete alternate edit of the Sebastiane film — in black and white and 16mm.

They’re releasing bluray box sets — so why not include stuff like this? There’s more than enough space on the discs, I’m guessing they’re thinking.

But… it’s not really that interesting, is it? The differences between this cut and the released cut isn’t … huge. The scenes are in a different order, but they aren’t really more compelling in this version than they are in the other version.

So I didn’t really watch this all the way through.

Sebastiane. Derek Jarman. 1975. ☐

Ah, so that’s why this is included in the Jarman box set. (It’s not directed by Jarman.)

Well, that is very scenery.

The newly-compiled jazz soundtrack is pretty odd.

Even for a single camera/no edits shooting of a ballet, it’s not done very well. I mean, the third bottom half here, for instance, is below the stage… and while they move the camera slightly, it seems pretty random. This seems to be Edmee Wood’s only credit on imdb.

So I guess this is more of a documentation of a ballet than a short film?

OK, now the soundtrack is more straightforward.

I’m not really into ballet — I mean, I don’t dislike it or anything, I’ve just not seen much ballet.

But I’m not sure whether these people are really that good dancers? Their movements seem kinda tentative and sometimes awkward?

Oh my god! Wood zoomed in a bit!

Right:

Jazz Calendar is a ballet created in 1968 by Frederick Ashton to the music of Richard Rodney Bennett. The ballet was first performed on 9 January 1968 by The Royal Ballet at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, with designs by Derek Jarman. The work was performed over 50 times up to 1979 by the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden but is not part of the current repertoire.

See? It’s just kinda not very … physical. But perhaps it’s meant to look tentative and awkward? You never know with these arteestes.

It does seem in-credible that the London Opera House would have downright bad dancers in their ballet, but…

And perhaps it would have been better with the original music?

OK, Wikipedia said that this section is supposed to be a parody of a men’s dancing class… but they aren’t dancing any worse here than in the previous sections.

So how to throw the die on this one? It’s not meant to be a “real movie” or anything, so I’m gonna score it on the ballet itself (with the music on this bluray):

Jazz Calendar. Edmee Wood. 1968. ⚁