"I am dying in time to the splash of their oars - if arms as steady as these had embraced me in life...". This film is Jarman's vision of the life of the Italian painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1573 - 1610). Caravaggio revisits periods of his tempestuous life in a series of deathbed flashbacks and prose-poem voice-overs, focusing particularly on the intense relationship between himself and a couple who model for him in Rome, Lena and Ranuccio. This sexual and violent love triangle eve find out more...

What action there is in this downplayed drama stems from the homoerotic tensions generated by the enrolment of a beautiful young samurai into the Shinsengumi Militia, a school famous for its strict discipline code, and the period setting of late 19th Century Japan is effectively used to evoke the extreme secrecy that any kind of institutional homosexuality was forced to exist in. The swordplay provides a welcome interval between the desperate (and often sad) sex scenes, showing the samurai tende find out more...

find out more...

In first century Rome, two student friends, Encolpio and Ascilto, argue about ownership of the boy Gitone, divide their belongings and split up. The boy, allowed to choose who he goes with, chooses Ascilto. Only a sudden earthquake saves Encolpio from suicide. We follow Encolpio through a series of adventures, where he is eventually reunited with Ascilto, and which culminates in them helping a man kidnap a hermaphrodite demi-god from a temple. The god dies, and as punishment Encolpio becomes imp find out more...