Adieu: The Film

ADIEU – FILM PROPOSAL

Thick & Tight and Corali Dance Company wish to create a short dance film. Adieu will explore the life of the filmmaker, director, painter, gardener, activist, writer and polymath Derek Jarman in his final years while living in Prospect Cottage at Dungeness.

ABOUT ADIEU

Adieu was originally a live stage work by Thick & Tight and Corali Dance Company, bringing together queer and learning disabled artists to offer a new insight into Derek Jarman and his work.

During Jarman’s time at Prospect Cottage, he was creating some of his greatest works including the books Modern Nature and Chroma, the films The Garden and Blue and his greatest living work, his garden. Jarman was dying during these years after contracting AIDS; he gradually lost his eyesight and ability to see the spectrum of colour, at the same time as creating a garden full of colour. Adieu is a reflection on the transience of experience, the order of nature and the beauty of innocence; an insight into Jarman’s queerness, ecology and the AIDS crisis, seen through a queer & minority lens. 

The work allows the performers to connect to important and complex subjects that are traditionally reserved for non-disabled or academic environments, which in turn opens up new conversations and awareness for audiences. Thick & Tight and Corali Dance Company will transport you to a reverie, somewhere between a flowering sea, a nuclear garden and a primary coloured dream. 

TRAILER:  https://youtu.be/vtOspxAN95k 

WEB PAGE: www.thickandtight.com/adieu

Photos by Rosie Powell

ADIEU, THE FILM

Adieu has been performed live several times, most notably as part of London International Mime Festival at Sadler’s Wells in 2019. We are now planning to turn the work into a film, allowing us to develop our collaboration in a medium closely associated with Jarman and taking inspiration from his filmmaking techniques. Upscaling Adieu into a film will offer us new ways to capture and share the work, to promote Jarman and his work to dance and film audiences, learning-disabled audiences and a new generation of queer people. We also hope that the film will shine a light on our companies’ shared ethos and the significance of intersecting marginalised experiences within the arts. 

We plan to film part of the work on location at Prospect Cottage in March 2023, thanks to a residency supported by Creative Folkestone. We would draw inspiration from Jarman’s films shot at Dungeness such as The Garden. We hope to bring ten performers down to the cottage for a two-day shoot. Alongside this location filming, some parts of the work will be filmed in a greenscreen dance studio. We will also be interviewing a selection of artists and friends of Jarman’s to help all the performers to better understand who Jarman was and to feed into the narrative of the film.

These plans require considerable support and financial assistance to contribute to:

• Accommodation
• Access support
• Transport
• Catering
• Artist and team fees
• Hiring film equipment
• Producer
• Editing costs
• Relevant licensing
• Distribution

Alongside this Crowdfunding campaign, we will apply for funding from Arts Council England and seek support through other relevant organisations and funding channels.

Thick & Tight and Corali have both won awards for their digital output; Corali most notably winning several awards for their recent short film Dancing To Art, a collaboration with The Tate. We would seek to enter the film of Adieu into several film festivals including the Jarman Film Award and Oska Bright Film Award (previously won by Corali), as well as finding creative and accessible ways to share it online.

ABOUT THICK & TIGHT AND CORALI

Thick & Tight are an award-winning queer-led dance company who have been working in the sector for 10 years, presenting their work in LGBTQI+ clubs and pubs as well as venues such as the Royal Opera House, Sadler’s Wells and The Barbican. They are currently associate artists at The Albany and The Lowry and Align Artists at South East Dance. 

Corali Dance Company is a leader in work made by people with a learning disability and has been running for over 30 years. 

Together, Thick & Tight and Corali create work and facilitate projects which focus on how to intersect people with different marginalised experiences. They do this with the aim to encourage integrated learning, to shift how ‘excellence’ in the arts is judged and to support the production of socially engaged work.

Thick & Tight’s website / social media: www.thickandtight.com / @thicktightdance

Corali’s website / social media: www.corali.org.uk / @coralidance

THE TEAM FOR ADIEU

We are putting together a team of artists to support the creation of the film. The majority of the people we will be working with have lived experience of a marginalised identity. The team will bring in-depth and new understanding to the subject matters, diversifying perceptions of Jarman and his work.

So far the team includes:

Direction and Editing: Courtney Nettleford and Thick & Tight’s co-directors Daniel Hay-Gordon & Eleanor Perry

Costume and Prop Design: Tim Spooner and Sheila Hay

Producer: Lou Rogers

We have also approached people to work with us as a mentor and dramaturg.

THANK YOU!

If you feel you are able to give some money towards this project we'd all appreciate it very much. Any amount would be helpful and you would be named in the film's credits if you wished to be. If you'd like to stay in touch with us we'll let you know about the first screenings of the film, hopefully by Autumn 2023, and will invite you if possible. Thank you so much!