On demand: "Derek"

2008's Derek found a survivor of the British art cinema (Isaac Julien) paying impressionistic tribute to a fallen comrade (Derek Jarman, our posher Pasolini, the patron saint of Old Compton Street) in the New Documentary Style of the early 21st century. The subject is represented in his own words and images, seen and heard in an extended interview with Bernard Rose reflecting on his childhood, his influences (Hockney, Warhol, Anger), the work, the surrounding scene and the world(s) he created for himself and others, recreated anew here with full access to the Jarman archive and the arresting and often startling imagery of the films and videos themselves. In retrospect, it seems wild that this career should have opened with the bold one-two of 1976's Sebastiane and 1978's Jubilee, which - whatever their pros and cons as independently financed provocations - were singular works, heading in directions few British filmmakers have gone in since; you could say much the same of Jarman's last film and testament, 1993's Blue, which I'm just about old enough to remember launched on Channel 4, Radio 3 and in cinemas simultaneously. Who's thinking that big nowadays?

Representing Jarman's mature period - the run of better-dressed dramas he made with public funding from 1986's Caravaggio onwards - Tilda Swinton is observed ghosting through a newly remodelled and sterile London, a cathedral to capital, and penning a letter on the soundtrack with the aim of cluing her former employer in on developments in the years since his passing: chiefly the gentrification of Britain and the streamlining of its creative industries, pointed towards far sunnier, cosier images and the potential profits they represent. (But to what artistic end?) These occasional cutaways might have presented as a slight continuity issue, suggesting as they do another film entirely, one setting Jarman in fond context. Yet they also serve as a reminder of how Jarman's polyphonic films often incorporated disparate voices, working in different tones and textures to the point of seeming torn or ragged. (Julien underlines the point by closing with Elisabeth Welch singing "Stormy Weather" from 1980's The Tempest.) More energy is apparent than there would be in any polished, official portrait: between them, Julien and Jarman - even their names sort of rhyme - cover a lot of ground in these eighty minutes. Sex, politics, pop music; religion, AIDS, death. Shimmering and shifting like the waves lapping at the shores of Jarman's Dungeness home, Derek leaves you keen to revisit Jarman's in every sense original films - and may yet inspire another young filmmaker or two to follow his lead.

Derek is available on DVD through the BFI, and currently streaming on YouTube.