SOLO SCREENING
​
The Garden (1990)
Derek Jarman
The Miles Memorial Playhouse*
Sunday, March 16, 2025,
Doors at 7:00 PM
Half waking dream and half fiery polemic, The Garden was born of director Jarman’s rage over continued anti-gay discrimination and the sluggardly response to the AIDS crisis—he had been diagnosed HIV positive in 1988. Starring Tilda Swinton, this uniquely kaleidoscopic film shows the filmmaker’s genius at its most coruscating, making space in its breadth of vision for an over-the-top Hollywood-style musical number, nightmare images of tar-and-feather queer persecution, and footage of the particularly menacing-looking nuclear power plant that overlooks Jarman’s own garden, the point from which his film begins, and a cherished spot which he must keep to tending even as his body begins to betray him. Writhing with sorrow and anger, and yet so vividly alive to the loveliness of being, The Garden is a baleful and beautiful epistle from the brink of the beyond (Nick Pinkerton, The Metrograph).
​
Image: Derek Jarman The Garden, 1990. Courtesy © Basilisk Communications, Ltd.
​
*This screening was originally scheduled to take place at Del Vaz Projects. Due to high attendance, we are changing the venue to the newly restored, historic Miles Memorial Playhouse
1130 Lincoln Blvd Santa Monica, CA 90403. Visits to Earthshaker can be made preceding the screening from 5 to 7 PM.
