Derek Jarman struggled for seven years to bring his portrait of the 17th century Italian artist Michelangelo da Caravaggio to the screen. The result was well worth the wait. It’s a freely dramatised portrait which conjures several of the controversial artist’s most famous paintings through elaborate and beautifully photographed tableaux vivants, and boasts wonderful performances from Nigel Terry, Sean Bean, and, in her first role, Tilda Swinton.
Up Next in BFI Restorations
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Akenfield
Based on Ronald Blythe’s much-loved oral history book, Akenfield traces three generations of one Suffolk family and their lives in the farming industry, with director Peter Hall – known for his theatre direction - using to great effect a cast non-professional actors drawn from the communities of ...
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South: Sir Ernest Shackleton's Glorio...
Shackleton's death over 100 years ago in 1922 is seen to have marked the end of the ‘heroic age’ of Antarctic exploration. A record of one of the greatest survival stories in the history of exploration, South is the original film – exquisitely photographed by Frank Hurley – of Shackleton’s 1914-1...
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Pressure
Hailed as Britain's first black feature film, Pressure is a hard-hitting, honest document of the plight of disenchanted British-born black youths. Set in 1970s London, it tells the story of Tony, a bright school-leaver, son of West Indian immigrants, who finds himself torn between his parents' ch...
