Session as part of the Festival des Cinémas Différents et Expérimentaux de Paris.
Focus # 1: Derek Jarman’s The Garden, lecture by Cy Lecerf Maulpoix
Radical artist, activist and gardener, Derek Jarman released The Garden in 1990, a furiously melancholic film. By subversively thwarting and replaying the clichés of the New Testament and the life of Christ, he virulently attacks the stigmatization of homosexuality introduced by Margaret Thatcher’s conservative policies in the midst of the AIDS epidemic. Set in the mineral garden of Prospect Cottage, a stone’s throw from the Dungeness nuclear power station, The Garden blurs the boundaries between imagination and reality. Much like his work table, a garden of the imagination, on which is placed a maquette of his refuge, around which the violence of make-believe is embodied.
In order to further explore in particular the relationship between technology, symbolism and the idea of “nature”, we have invited Cy Lecerf Maulpoix to give an introductory presentation. An independent researcher involved in queer activism collectives and the author of several books, including Écologies déviantes (Cambourakis, 2021), he is currently pursuing several research projects intersecting the politics of sexual dissidence, ecology and technocritical approaches to capitalism.
✴ Conference/discussion with Cy Lecerf Maulpoix: 7pm
✴ Screening of The Garden (Derek Jarman, G-B / 16mm digitized / 1990 / 1h32): 8pm
