CARAVAGGIO

British director Derek Jarman spent seven years working on this film about the life of the great painter Caravaggio (1571-1610), who had a short, tempestuous life, full of intense passions and devastating love stories. The film is a ground-breaking biography, building its narrative upon a de profundis confession of the dying Caravaggio – who was stabbed to death during a fight – which draws the portrait of an artist as a literally accursed figure, who will pay the price for his nonconformist behavior and his sexual identity. At the same time, the Renaissance Era is not depicted in its mythically bright colors, but is revealed as a dark period of social decline and moral decay.