Blue (1993)    
The screen of this movie remains plain and unchanging during its 72 minutes. Over the blue surface of the screen, the voices of four actors, close friends of the director, the speech of the director himself, the sound effects and the music narrate Derek Jarman's experience with the AIDS virus, alternating the description of the progress of the virus with deep considerations on poetry, art and life.
The idea of this extraordinary attempt was suggested to Jarman by his loss of sight during the last stages of the illness; he was inspired by the French painter Yves Klein, who eagerly experimented
with monochromes. The blue surface represents serenity and contemplation.
"Blue" is the last, touching work by Derek Jarman, who succumbed to AIDS some months later. His artistic testament, anyway, is a hymn to life and art: Jarman, mortally ill, does not give up the irony and experiments a radical shift of the limits of sight. 
 
The blue screen is accompanied by Simon Fisher Turner's poetic music and seductive words, sublimely formulated by the actors Nigel Terry, John Quentin and Tilda Swinton, all of them faithful, long-time collaborators of Jarman's.
   
Great Britain, 1993
Producer: James Mackay
Screenplay: Derek Jarman
Music: Simon Fisher Turner
Production company: Basislisk Communication/ Uplink, 31 Percy St., London W1P 9FG, UK.
Tel: 44.71.580 72 22, Fax: 44.71.631 05 72
Foreign sales agent: BFI Production, 29 Rathbone St., London W1P 1AG, UK.
Tel: 44.71.636 55 87, Fax: 44.71.580 94 56
Running time: 72 mins
Format: 35mm/1:1.66, colour
Dialogue: English
 
"The monochrome is a kind of alchemy, efficiently devoid of all personality. It articulates the silence itself. It constitutes a fragment of an infinite piece of work with no boundaries. Blue as the landscape of freedom"
Derek Jarman.
 
Buy the soundtrack at MusicCentral
 
Buy the booklet of Blue at Channel 4

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