The vitals:
Tuesday, June 10
7:00 ~ Doors
7:30 ~ BLUE

Derek Jarman died on Saturday, February 19, 1994 from AIDS-related complications. He was only 52. To box him into any one title is impossible; An artist and filmmaker, a gay rights activist and poet, a stage designer and gardener, Derek Jarman contained multitudes. As a pioneer of experimental and queer cinema he designed sets for groundbreaking and subversive films like Ken Russell’s The Devils (1971), directed queer and boundary-pushing masterpieces like Caravaggio (1986) and Wittgenstein (1993), and even discovered future acting legend Tilda Swinton. However, even in such a monumental body of work, Blue stands apart. As Jarman put it himself: “the first film made by someone with AIDS as opposed to one made about the situation”, Blue is a heart-wrenching self-portrait and self-eulogy unlike any other.

As AIDS progressed through his body, Jarman developed cytomegalovirus, a disease which began to steal his eyesight. This birthed Blue, a film named for the singular static image of Klein Blue it displays for its entire 79 minute runtime. Jarman felt that “Blue is darkness made visible” and that it most accurately portrayed his sensation of going blind. The resulting film, a static screen sonically overlaid with poems, song, personal diary entries, stories, and the voices of his closest loved ones is one of the most courageous and potent pieces of art created about the AIDS crisis. 

Blue is simultaneously an aching and agonizing piece about an artist mourning a life and work that will be left unfinished, and a triumphant valediction forbidding mourning, a man looking death in the eye and saying “it [will] not catch us unaware”. It is a film that is deeply personal and also one of the defining works on the AIDS crisis. The film was released on the UK’s Channel 4 on Sunday, September 19th, 1993, exactly 6 months before Jarman’s death.

John. Daniel. Howard. Graham. Terry. Paul. Derek.

—Colin Page

SEE YOU AT THE MOVIES
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