Jarman was given a Super 8 camera in the late 1960s, and began to experiment. Jarman’s first Super 8 film in his studio on Bankside. Shot partly in colour – this documents the inside of his studio and people visiting – and the black and white shots document mainly the exteriors, along with portraits of his friends.
Gerald’s Film (1976) is a portrait of the actor and cinematographer, Gerald Incandela, who is credited as the film’s co-photographer, filmed in the ruins of a Victorian boathouse in Essex.
I remember that in the film, Jarman filmed Gerald Incandela in the wreck of a barn, through the windows or through a gap in the wall.
Hand-held camera looking though the bones of an old boathouse. I think I saw the film projected, the thing I really noticed was that the film was really slowed down, so it was almost frame by frame. This wasn’t something I expected to see in the cinemas it was really remarkable. The camera focused on this beautiful man’s face, inside the boathouse. The golden light and the faltering, yet very intimate, gaze. Its dreamlike quality shimmered in a space between still and moving image, the unstoppable present of cinema subverted by the readability of individual successive frames.
Filmed at 6 frames a second and projected at 3 frames a second, it was a blurry kind of stop-motion photography. Focused on this handsome man’s face, stood inside the boathouse.
The beautiful golden light and the faltering, yet very intimate, gaze.