Blue

6 April, 2025 - 12:00
ARCA
TICKETS

“Blue walks into the labyrinth. Absolute silence is demanded of all its visitors, so their presence does not disturb the poets who are directing the excavations. Digging can only proceed on the calmest of days as rain and wind destroy the finds. The archaeology of sound has only just been perfected and the systematic cataloguing of words has until recently been undertaken in a haphazard way. Blue watched as a word or phrase materialised in scintillating sparks, a poetry of fire which cast everything into darkness with the brightness of its reflections.” (Derek Jarman)

 

In the presence of Simon Fisher Turner

Blue

Derek Jarman
,
UK
,
1993
,
digital
,
colour
,
79'

Dedicated to his partner Keith Collins (aka “H.B.”) “and all true lovers”, Jarman’s last feature stands as one of the great final films and as a singularly poetic and affecting account of living and dying with AIDS. Famously, in acknowledgment of, and in meditation upon, his failing eyesight, the image consists wholly, unflinchingly, of a hue as close to Yves Klein’s patented “International Klein Blue” as could be captured on film. John Quentin, Nigel Terry, Tilda Swinton and Jarman himself read excerpts from the director’s hospital diaries and recite his poetry, atop an immersive soundtrack created by Simon Fisher Turner and several of Jarman’s other musical collaborators.