The Last of England

Derek Jarman's passionate and poetic lament on the rise of Thatcherism and corporate dealings.

Jarman reimagines London's yuppie Docklands as a ruined wasteland of desperation and terror, where prisoners are executed in cold blood and soldiers engage in brutal sex. Culminating in Tilda Swinton's ecstatic revolt against injustice, it chimed with all those who felt abject dismay at Thatcher's divisive policies and the rise of big business.

Made just after he was diagnosed with HIV, Jarman's passionate fusion of Super8 material, riot footage and home-movies is jagged and elegiac; an angry, powerful, Blake-like vision of England in turmoil.