English filmmaker, artist, writer and activist Derek Jarman was BOTD in 1942. Born in London to a military family, he studied at King’s College London and the Slade School of Fine Art. Initially working as a stage designer, he drew praise for his surrealist production design for Ken Russell’s film The Devils. He made his feature film debut with Sebastiane, a homoerotic retelling of the life of Saint Sebastian, filmed entirely in Latin and with generous full-frontal male nudity. He followed this with the 1977 punk dystopia Jubilee, released in the year of Queen Elizabeth II’s Golden Jubilee and depicting Queen Elizabeth the First returning to an anarchic and post-apocalyptic England, and an anarchic staging of Shakespeare‘s The Tempest. With the assistance of British Film Institute funding, he made experimental biopics Caravaggio and Wittgenstein. Diagnosed with AIDS in the 1980s, he purchased a cottage in Dungeness on the Kent coast, which became the setting for his films The Garden and The Last of England. His 1989 film War Requiem, set to Benjamin Britten’s Requiem and starring Laurence Olivier, also brought critical acclaim. His 1991 film Edward II, an explicitly queer reading of Christopher Marlowe‘s play about King Edward II‘s love for Piers Gaveston, premiered at the Venice Film Festival, bringing his work to an international audience. His frequent collaborators included the actress Tilda Swinton, composer Simon Fisher Turner, costume designer Sandy Powell and filmmaker John Maybury. A ferocious advocate for gay rights, Jarman campaigned against the Thatcher government’s homophobic Section 28 law and (unusually for the time) spoke openly about his AIDS diagnosis. A prolific writer and diarist, his memoirs include At Your Own Risk, Modern Nature andChroma. He also became famous for his garden at Dungeness, decorated with driftwood and found objects from the beach, nestling in the shadow of a nuclear power station. His final film Blue, a meditation on his AIDS-related illness and the loss of his sight, was made while he was dying and released posthumously. Jarman was in a long-term relationship with Philip MacDonald (the star of The Garden) and was cared for by his partner Keith Collins until his death in 1994, aged 52. Now considered one of the most innovative artists of his generation, he set a standard for radical queer politics and artistry, inspiring generations of writers, artists and activists.