{"id":489,"date":"2022-02-01T08:22:12","date_gmt":"2022-02-01T08:22:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/equality-and-diversity\/?p=489"},"modified":"2022-02-14T14:21:59","modified_gmt":"2022-02-14T14:21:59","slug":"lgbtq-history-month-film-recommendations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/equality-and-diversity\/lgbtq-history-month-film-recommendations\/","title":{"rendered":"LGBTQ+ History month film recommendations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In honour of LGBTQ+ History month starting today, third-year BA Film Studies students Lydia Cooper and Aoife Ranyell, are providing a series of weekly reviews that capture this year\u2019s theme of Politics In Art: ‘The Arc Is Long\u2019<\/strong>. First up is Lydia Cooper’s review of Caravaggio <\/em>(1986).<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Shot from the film, Caravaggio, <\/em>dir. Derek Jarman, British Film Institute, 1986. [Description: A person sitting gazing into the distance with a dark backdrop. They are wearing a white top with their shoulder exposed and they are holding different fruits and leaves in their arms.]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n


January 31st<\/sup> would\u2019ve been the pioneering queer filmmaker Derek Jarman\u2019s 80th<\/sup> birthday, and with this in mind I re-watched his 1986 film Caravaggio<\/em><\/a>.  Caravaggio<\/em> was the first film of Jarman\u2019s I saw and it\u2019s still my favourite because, despite not having the outwardly political themes or avant-garde quality of some of his other films, Caravaggio\u2019s<\/em> style, aesthetic and character add together to make a perfectly composed film on queer art and history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Caravaggio<\/em> is an important film in British queer cinema because of its unapologetic portrayal of a historical figure in same-sex relationships<\/a>. There has been much debate about Caravaggio\u2019s sexuality, so for Jarman to show him as openly queer, without relying on subtextual homoeroticism, was (and, in some ways, still is) ground-breaking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The film follows Caravaggio (Nigel Terry) as he reflects on his life as a young artist during the Italian Renaissance. The cinematography and framing are spectacular, making the film look like a prolonged series of paintings, bringing Caravaggio\u2019s paintings to life and enriching them with the emotions of the film. Although the film doesn\u2019t contain much dialogue and has a slightly slower pace, the beautiful colour palette evokes everything that extra words could not. The film is filled with striking reds, glistening golds and melancholy blues and purples, depicting the feelings of passion, religion, death, love, sex, loneliness and isolation shown throughout the film, and Caravaggio\u2019s life. Jarman blends the past and the present to create a queer classic that evokes equal parts art, politics, desire and passion while breaking conventional film form to create a more radical take on the classic historical film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All reviewed films are available to stream via Kanopy<\/a>, where as a UWE Bristol student your membership is free.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Further viewing on Kanopy<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jubilee<\/a> (1978) \u2013 Dir. Derek Jarman<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wittgenstein<\/a> (1993) \u2013 Dir. Derek Jarman<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, if you have an EDI or Health and Wellbeing story to tell, please do get in touch at edi@uwe.ac.uk as we welcome contributions from all staff and students for our blog. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In honour of LGBTQ+ History month starting today, third-year BA Film Studies students Lydia Cooper and Aoife Ranyell, are providing a series of weekly reviews that capture this year\u2019s theme of Politics In Art: ‘The Arc Is Long\u2019. First up is Lydia Cooper’s review of Caravaggio (1986). January 31st would\u2019ve been the pioneering queer filmmaker … Continue reading “LGBTQ+ History month film recommendations”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[22],"class_list":["post-489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised","tag-lgbt-history-month"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/equality-and-diversity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/equality-and-diversity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/equality-and-diversity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/equality-and-diversity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/62"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/equality-and-diversity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=489"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/equality-and-diversity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":504,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/equality-and-diversity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489\/revisions\/504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/equality-and-diversity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/equality-and-diversity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/equality-and-diversity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}