Blue (1993, Derek Jarman) + Derek (2008, Isaac Julien)

Thursday 23rd of February, 6:15pm in the Richard Hoggart Building cinema (Room 104)

Join us on Thursday the 23rd of February for a screening of Derek Jarman’s Blue (1993) followed by Isaac Julien’s Derek (2008), a documentary tribute to Jarman. The screening will be in the RHB Cinema (Room 104), doors from 6pm for a 6:15pm start. The films are 1 hour 19 minutes and 1 hour 16 minutes respectively. There will be a ten minute break in between the films for a total run time of 2 hours 45 minutes, with the screening finishing at 9pm.

The Tate acquired Blue for its collection in 2014; here is the collection entry:

Blue 1993 is a film by the British artist and filmmaker Derek Jarman which features a single static shot of the colour blue with a voiceover and musical soundtrack. The voiceover, written by Jarman, consists of a diaristic and poetic text documenting his AIDS-related illness and impending death at a time that he had become partially blind, his vision often interrupted by blue light. The film is Jarman’s last feature and was completed only a few months before he died. Consequently, Blue forms a direct counterpart to the late painting Ataxia - Aids is Fun 1993 (Tate T06768) in its evocation of Jarman’s final illness, albeit from a very different standpoint.

The visual language of Blue – an unchanging blue screen – directly references Yves Klein’s (1928–1962) evocation of the void and zones of immateriality through his use of the colour ‘International Klein Blue’ (see, for instance, Klein’s IKB 79 1959, Tate T01513). The film’s voiceover is spoken by Jarman alongside long-term collaborators Tilda Swinton, Nigel Terry and John Quentin. The text – often spoken as a form of verse – is augmented by music and sound by Jarman’s regular composer Simon Fisher-Turner, as well as Coil, Momus, Karol Szymanowski and Eric Satie.

The genesis of Blue dates back to 1987 when Jarman conceived of a film – initially tentatively titled International Blue (alternative early titles include Blue is Poison and My Blue Heaven) – that directly engaged with Klein’s painting and underlying philosophy. Jarman’s initial proposal was for a film that might explore: ‘the juxtaposition of sound and image that exists in The Last of England [a feature film made by Jarman in 1987], but unlike this film to produce an atmosphere of calm and joy. A world to which refugees from that dark space may journey.’ (Derek Jarman, ‘proposal for Blue’, August 1987, quoted in Peake 1999, p.398.) The film, even at this very early stage of development, was always conceived to be an imageless projected screen of International Klein Blue complemented by a soundtrack that would tell the story of Klein ‘in sound and jazzy be-bop’ (Jarman 1987, quoted in Peake 1999, p.398). However, because such an approach would have inevitably rendered the film virtually impossible to fund, he then planned for the film to be a masque set in a blue room.

As Jarman developed his ideas for the film over ensuing years, texts by Klein were augmented by related texts by other artists and writers and then finally by Jarman himself. As his illness took greater hold, and Channel 4 agreed to fund the development of the script, the film’s subject moved from a concentration on Klein to one that conveyed a wider myth about a journey through London (this version was titled Blueprint for Bliss or Bliss). The film became less about Klein and both more social and personal before it then evolved, as Pansy, into ‘a musical film covering anti-queer legislation from the 60s to the 80s’ – a script that was rejected by Channel 4 (Derek Jarman and Malcolm Sutherland quoted in Peake 1999, p.477).

By the end of 1992 Jarman returned once again to Blue as he had originally conceived it, with a blue screen devoid of imagery so that nothing would detract from ‘the admirable austerity of the void’ (Jarman and Sutherland quoted in Peake 1999, p.477). The film became a meditation on colour, the void and his disease. Jarman felt that he had previously failed to address AIDS through film in the way he had done through his late paintings. By accompanying a field of blue with a richly layered soundtrack, he finally succeeded in addressing this subject with film by creating an elegiac journey towards a zone of immateriality. Jarman explained in a late proposal for the film: ‘The monochrome is an alchemy, effective liberation from personality. It articulates silence. It is a fragment of an immense work without limit. The blue of the landscape of liberty.’ (Jarman 1987, quoted in Peake 1999, p.515.)

For more on Derek Jarman’s work, see the BFI’s guide to 5 of his most essential films. For an outstanding essay on the AIDS crisis in Britain, which also discusses Jarman’s work, see Tom Crewe, “Here was a plague”, London Review of Books Vol. 40 No. 18, 27 September 2018.

And here is the description of Derek from Isaac Julien’s website:

In a collaboration with Tilda Swinton Derek poetically tells the story of Derek Jarman through extensive use of archive footage. The documentary is centred in a day-long interview Jarman gave to Colin McCabe in the 80s.

From Sebastiane (1976) to Blue (1992), Derek Jarman’s films constantly interrogated time and art, and epitomised his own era. He was a painter, part of that moment that made sixties London a capital of the art world. He was a film-maker, perhaps the single most crucial figure of British independent cinema through the seventies, eighties and nineties. He lived as a gay man surfing the joys of Gay Liberation and the sorrows of Aids. He lived as a participant observer, noting with pen or camera all that passed before him - from punk to Thatcher, from Hampstead Heath to film premiere.

Now those images serve to place his art in his time, to produce a fascinating history that we can put to use. As well as the feature films and Super 8 films, which span three decades, there are the extensive video clips he recorded from the early seventies, for artists from the Smiths to the Pet Shop Boys, and from television to film festivals in Japan, Berlin and Cologne. There are also images of Derek, as he erupted into the viewfinder of the news media. This unique perspective provides a counterpoint, as his own images are juxtaposed with the images of the history that generated them.

The first major UK exhibition of Isaac Julien’s work, Isaac Julien: What Freedom is to Me, will take place at the Tate Britain from 26 April to 20 August 2023. 16-25s can get £5 entry through Tate Collective.