About

British artist Derek Jarman’s final film was completed just months before his death of AIDS-related illness. Its unchanging blue screen mirrors Jarman’s loss of sight, a side effect of his medical treatment that is chronicled in the film.

The unrelenting blue effectively ‘blinds’ the audience, evoking the visual deprivation of an isolation tank, which attunes the ear to every sound in this immersive journey into Jarman’s life. The narration, featuring the artist himself and actors Tilda Swinton, John Terry and John Quentin, and is largely non-linear, the mundanity and quiet fear of medical procedures interspersed with memories and lists of dead friends and drug side effects. Simon Fisher Turner’s music creates a soundscape ranging from bell-like sounds, dance music, choral pieces and solo piano.

Blue is both an illuminating comment on its time - when many AIDS sufferers died and homophobia was politically sanctioned in Thatcher’s Britain - and timeless, as an exploration of the introspection, anger, sadness and acceptance at the end of life. It remains generationally relevant, continuing to appear as an installation in several galleries around the world and had a stage adaptation, Blue Now, in 2023. Its influence can be also traced in other creative explorations of the AIDS epidemic in Britain, such as Russell T Davies’ 2021 TV series It’s a Sin.

Ages 15+ | Contains adult themes