Rob Munday

The path to sainthood is traditionally a long and complicated one and includes the process of evaluating a person’s holiness/virtue and attributing a verified miracle to the individual. For a group of gay male nuns, known as the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, they wanted an alternative and decided to canonise their beloved icon Derek Jarman. So, on the 22nd September 1991, they headed to his him home in Dungeness and held a beautiful, tongue-in-cheek ceremony where they made him a queer saint.

Marco Alessi’s insightful 23-minute documentary Saintmaking focuses on the events that lead to the formation of that aforementioned sisterhood and why they chose to celebrate Jarman, for all that he stood for. Told via archival footage, reenactments and fascinating interviews with the nuns, who hadn’t been in a room together for over 20-years, the film is an important record of events, an essential insight into the history of queer activism and, just as important, an entertaining and engaging watch.

“Encountering Jarman in his writing was a bit of a watershed moment for me as a queer person”

Introduced to Jarman’s story when a friend and “mentor” gave them a stack of the artist’s books as a present, Alessi describes the experience of reading the publications as somewhat of a “watershed moment” as a queer person. “I hadn’t really encountered a first-person account of queer life in the 80s and 90s before and nothing remotely resembling LGBTQ history was mentioned as part of my education”, the director explains. Adding that “it was Jarman that taught me about the Sexual Offences Act, section 28, the age-of-consent debates, HIV and Aids in the UK”.

A particular event that stood out was one that Jarman referred to as one of the happiest of his life, the day he became a saint. After researching the occasion and those involved, Alessi was intrigued to find out that the gay male nuns were actually part of an international order, with groups all over the world. An obsession was born and the filmmaker was inspired to capture the story on screen, with the aim of recording “the Sisters’ version of events”, while also demonstrating “the long-lasting and incalculable impact of speaking truth to power in any form you can”.

Mother Mandragora Salacious in Purple – one of the nun’s in the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence

An empowering viewing experience, Saintmaking is driven by the powerful story of the sisterhood, but also by the sparkling, passionate personalities of its members. From their individual accounts, to the bond they so obviously share with each other, it’s an inspiring pleasure to spend time in their company and Alessi ensures you truly empathise with their heartache and pain, but also celebrate in their joy and camaraderie – something the director picked up on early in the production:

“To get a sense of them as a group, we had a preliminary Zoom meeting – they called it a ‘nuncheon'”, Alessi reveals as we discuss the sisterhood . “It was a riotously good time. They are their own storytelling engine. They talk over each other, they take the piss out of each other, they are spilling over with love for each other. They slipped straight back into their old dynamics, and so I knew I wanted to have a self-led nuncheon at the core of the film, rather than make things overly formal”.

Sister Sic Transit Gloria Swanson – ready for his close-up

As a student I’d studied the work of Jarman and as an adult I’d visited his unusual cottage in its remarkable location on the South East coast of England, but I was never really schooled on his importance in the gay rights movement and had certainly never been introduced to the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence before watching Alessi’s film. With the filmmaker admitting they felt “deeply inspired” by how the group “channeled their anger and despair into powerful positive action”, inspiration is a key factor in why Saintmaking is such an impactful short.

Things may have moved on since the sisterhood formed, but change is still needed in all walks-of-life and Alessi’s documentary plays like an important reminder of what humanity can achieve when they use their passion and voice for the benefit of all. As Alessi puts it: “The dream is that viewers will feel encouraged to tap into their inner Sisters and use that energy for good and start to explore different forms of activism in their own lives”.

Amen to that!