About

In the pandemonium of image
I present you with the universal Blue
Blue an open door to soul
An infinite possibility
Becoming tangible

In Derek Jarman's final work, an unchanging blue screen is accompanied by an affecting personal account of vision and illness, life and impending death. With no images, Blue asks its audience to grapple with what Jarman hoped would convey "the disaster of what I have been living through". The script weaves together reflections on the colour blue that Jarman was compiling in his volume Chroma: A Book of Colour – June '93 (1995), with extracts from his diaries that provide details of his deteriorating eyesight and the loss of colour vision as a consequence of an AIDS-related viral inflammation of the retina.

Blue takes its inspiration from the work of the French artist Yves Klein and the onscreen colour was intended to be as close to Klein's trademark IKB (International Klein Blue) as could be afforded by celluloid. In 1974 Jarman had considered making a film based on Klein's work and as the years passed, conceived the project (originally titled Bliss) as perhaps the concluding chapter of a trilogy, following The Last of England and The Garden, which echoed Dante's trajectory from the inferno to redemption and paradise. The film also has its genesis in a number of experimental performances titled Symphonie Monotone, the first of which was held at the Lumiere cinema in 1992. Led by Tilda Swinton and Jarman, it involved readings from an inventory of blue themed concepts and objects while images of Klein's painting at the Tate Museum and slides of blue colour fields were projected onscreen.

Made for a budget of £90,000 (funded in part by Mute Records in trade for one of Jarman's beautiful bound sketchbooks mapping out the progress of working on the film), Blue premiered at the 1993 Venice Biennale. It was then screened on Channel 4 in the UK with a simultaneous audio broadcast on BBC Radio 3. Producer James Mackay recalled that upon completing Blue Jarman confessed: "I've finally done what I've always had to do scrumptiously – that is, make a film about myself."

Ages 18+