Diana Harris and MacDonald Jackson, University of Auckland

British filmmaker Derek Jarman died in February 1994. Any comprehensive account of his achievements must include a revaluation of his 1979 screen adaptation of Shakespeare's The Tempest, which anticipated many of the distinctive strategies of Peter Greenaway's Prospero's Books (1991). Greenaway's film is hi-tech, with lavish crowd scenes and a kaleidoscopic profusion of images created with the aid of the "digital, electronic Graphic Paintbox."¹ Jarman's film was low budget, employing an orthodox mix of "masters, mid-shots and close-ups" (Jarman 194).² Yet, in their vastly different idioms, both movies dwell on the original script's obsession with the interaction between life, art, dream, and play, subtly shifting through different planes of reality and representation. In filling the frame each director draws on a rich European artistic heritage. Greenaway recalls Piranesi, Bronzino, Da Messina, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Botticelli, Veronese, Rembrandt, Bellini, and others. Jarman playfully alludes...