Director: Derek Jarman
Release Date: August 1987
In the book Kicking the Pricks (1987) Derek Jarman recalls that when filming ‘We created a formal shoot at the Victoria Docks for a week in November [1986] and improvised within it. By this time I had several cameras on each scene; sometimes the people turned up. If not, I got on with it. Sometimes the cameraman got bored and wandered off with some of the actors. The location was pretty spectacular. You could get lost quite easily in the hundreds of derelict rooms. I gave as few directions as possible. Most of the scenes directed themselves.’ Jarman continues, about another location used heavily in the film, that ‘Beckton with its ruined industrial complexes is one of the eeriest places, like a mammoth silent movie set, its buildings dynamited into the craziest angles.’
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One of numerous very fuzzy shots made at the derelict Beckton Gas Works, East Ham.
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Many shots in the film appear to be very random including this river frontage between Blackfriars and Southwark Bridges, featuring the view of the inclined Peter's Hill leading to the south front of St. Paul's Cathedral.
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The second random river shot shows the Victoria Embankment-Blackfriars Underpass junction with the Unilever Building, 1 Victoria Embankment, to the right.
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The third random river shot shows The Monument and St. Magnus the Martyr's Church in the gap between Adelaide House, to the left, and St. Magnus House.
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As the camera floats upstream it passes Adelaide House and reaches London Bridge.
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One of the numerous scenes filmed in and around the derelict Royal Victoria Dock.