JUBILEE

Shot in 1977 (the year punk died?) in the then-shitty neighborhood of Shad Thames, over six weeks on 200,000 pounds scraped together ad hoc, JUBILEE's production was as punk as its aesthetics. Having met Jordan in Vivienne Westwood's boutique where she worked, Jarman cast her as the film's fluorescent protagonist, the amateur historian/singer/militant Amyl Nitrate, then picked up Adam Ant in the street to play Kid, a Rimbaudish prodigy who meets his untimely end in the clutches of fascistoid motorcycle police. The shoot was reportedly a month-and-a-half-long party.

The conceit: Elizabeth I is sent forward several centuries by necromancer Dr. John Dee, who tells her, “I will reveal to thee the shadow of this time.” The Southwark that the Queen lands in is crusted with graffiti and burning cars, patrolled by both police and armed punks. The latter have apparently abolished law and order and now broadcast history lessons about the twilight of capitalism. The ruling classes of the past, we are told, created a variety of ideological control mechanisms, such as art (which was invented as a substitute for desire) and statistics (which replaced the world). Nitrate then reads from a History of Britain she's working on: “Human beings don't have any rights, but some dumb fucks told them they did.” Further, “Civilization was destroyed by resentment, but since civilization was always so fucking boring for everyone, who gives a shit.” Juvenile value-clasm at its rawest.

David Thomson called Jarman as “a true experimenter in forms.” JUBILEE bears this out with its poetic, metahistorical interludes and non-sequitur episodes, such as a Super 8 ballet number before a backdrop of burning wreckage and nude men in huge masks. Billed by Jarman as “a cabaret … a docustated fanzine … and a protest” and hailed by music historian Jon Savage as “the best film about punk.” (Cosmo Bjorkenheim)

“Our only hope is to re-create ourselves as artists or anarchists and release the energy for all.”