In the clip below, ‘Prospect Cottage’ is described as a ‘haunted paradise’. If so, it is haunted by a charming and welcoming ghost – Derek Jarman – the filmmaker and visual artist who set about creating this remarkable place in the last decade of his life.
The spirit of his work and personality is indeed still present – not least his indomitable creativity in the face of death (he was dying with AIDS when he created his famous garden). Losing his eyesight, it is as textural as it is visual.
Conjuring something special from what might seem an unpromising canvas, ‘Prospect Cottage’ sits at Dungeness, that unique shore on the Kent coast, often described as England’s only desert. It is a humble fisherman’s hut hunkered down in the shadow of a nuclear power station which Jarman described as twinkling like the emerald city at night. In its own way, this small tar blackened house with canary yellow windows and strange unearthly garden generates just as much power. It is a small jewel of the artistic spirit – the plants and flimsy flowers incongruously flourishing in what should be barren shingle, taking their chance against the cruel, maddening winds of the ‘Ness’.
Derek Jarman, the filmmaker will always be an enduring and important force, his remarkable enthusiasm inspiring a generation of our most creative artists and actors (Tilda Swinton started her exceptional career as his muse). But this place, so infused with his spirit is his lasting legacy too, now saved for the nation as a retreat for a new generation of artists and writers.
How appropriate for a garden without fences, barriers or boundaries – so that it seems to go on infinitely –
I can’t resist including a further clip with our leading film critic Mark Kermode. His moving recollections of Jarman perfectly illustrate why his work and this cottage remain so important.
