Queer Edward II

By the third act, a diligent archival documentary becomes humanist lightning in a bottle, illuminating the similarities between the ’90s and now.

Rollason’s spritely, unsentimental film doesn’t write a eulogy or erect a statue to all that we lost the day he died. Instead, for a brisk, potent and utterly absorbing 97 minutes that generations of filmmakers and film lovers can revisit whenever we want, it gives him back to us, so very alive.

If you love a movie about the movies, this one is a gem.

Queer Edward II is both a revealing analysis of what it took to mount one of his notable productions, but also tracks the resistance movement against an oppressive system that proved vital to endure and remember.

Rollason and fellow editor Nicole Halova, with supervision provided by the legendary longtime Werner Herzog-collaborator Joe Bini, effortlessly weave this material into the filmmaking story, underscoring how intimately intertwined politics, protest and art were at the time — a rebellious spirit of the times that will induce nostalgia almost as much as the intarsia knitwear and early ’90s haircuts seen here.

It’s an absorbing and affecting portrait of a dedicated artist at work.

Theo Rollason's found-footage documentary paints an intimate, absorbing, timely portrait of radical gay film-maker Derek Jarman during a stormy political period. Queer Edward II is scrappy and disjointed in places. That said, it gathers force into an intimate, humane, politically engaged film that partly plays like a time capsule of ancient history but sometimes feels like it could have been made yesterday.