‘A journey without direction’: British Queer Cinema post-Jarman

This article explores the place of contemporary British-based queer film-making in relation to an allegedly post-Thatcher era in which the struggles and oppressions that were so key to the radical currency of earlier iconic queer film-makers seemingly no longer hold the same social and political charge. The defiant eroticism, sexual politics and renewed militancy that was so characteristic of Derek Jarman's work throughout the 1980s and early 1990s in particular emerged as a quintessentially British part of a much broader wave of artistic dissidence. But did Jarman's work, and his position as the self-proclaimed voice of political dissent, play a role in influencing the direction of the British queer cinema that has emerged in the decades after his death in 1994? And just how ‘queer’ are such acclaimed films as Weekend (2011), Lilting (2014) and Pride (2014) when viewed through the analytical prism of a contemporary milieu steeped in the neo-liberal politics of homonormativity?