Blue
Project description
Blue is a film by Derek Jarman (1942–1994), the English artist and filmmaker whose multidisciplinary practice encompassed film, painting, set design, writing, gardening and activism. Rather than conventional narrative, Jarman developed an organic, painterly approach to filmmaking, bringing together fragmented images, sounds, text and ideas.
Jarman began his career as a set designer, working on films including Ken Russell’s The Devils, before turning to experimental Super 8 filmmaking. His first feature, Sebastiane (1976), was followed by Jubilee (1977), The Tempest (1979) and Caravaggio (1986), establishing his distinctive position within British experimental and independent cinema.
Jarman’s work responded directly to the political and cultural climate of Thatcher’s Britain, combining historical references with contemporary social and political concerns. Alongside his feature films, he collaborated with musicians and artists including The Smiths, Bryan Ferry, the Sex Pistols, Throbbing Gristle, the Pet Shop Boys, Suede and dancer Michael Clark, creating music videos, performances and film installations.
Diagnosed with HIV in 1986, Jarman continued to produce some of his most significant work while facing deteriorating health and impending blindness. Blue, made in 1993, reduces the visual field to a single, uninterrupted expanse of Yves Klein blue. Against this unchanging image, a densely layered soundtrack of voices, music and sound effects evokes memories, daily experiences, illness, desire, friendship and mortality.
The film moves between the ordinary and the fantastical, from coffee, newspapers and walks through London to visions of Marco Polo, the Taj Mahal and shifting fields of colour. Jarman’s lyrical narration transforms personal experience into a wider meditation on illness, dying and love, while the repeated return to blue becomes both a physical colour and an emotional and psychological space.
From 1986 until his death in 1994, Jarman lived at Prospect Cottage on the shingle beaches of Dungeness, Kent, where he created his celebrated garden. The house and garden were preserved following a campaign led by Art Fund and Creative Folkestone in 2020.
Bio
Derek Jarman (1942–1994) was an English artist and filmmaker whose practice encompassed experimental cinema, painting, set design, writing, gardening and performance. His films combine historical and literary references with contemporary politics, sexuality and personal experience, and include Sebastiane, Jubilee, The Tempest, Caravaggio, Edward II and Blue.
Jarman’s work has been presented internationally in major solo and group exhibitions, including Derek Jarman: A Retrospective at the Barbican, London (1996), Derek Jarman: Brutal Beauty at the Serpentine Gallery, London (2008), PROTEST! at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (2019), Modern Nature at the Garden Museum, London (2020), Dead Souls Whisper at Le Crédac, Paris (2021), and Radical Landscapes at Tate Liverpool (2022). More recent presentations include a solo exhibition at Take Ninagawa, Tokyo (2023), Digging in Another Time: Derek Jarman’s Modern Nature at the Hunterian Art Gallery, Glasgow (2024), and Delphinium Days at Gus Fisher Gallery, Auckland (2024) and UNSW Galleries, Sydney (2025).
His work has also been included in exhibitions at Palais de Tokyo, Paris, Vitra Design Museum, Tate Liverpool and the Smart Museum of Art, Chicago. In 2025, his films were the subject of a retrospective at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, while a major film programme accompanied Delphinium Days at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
Project details
Year: 2015
Artist: Derek Jarman
Year of Film Production: 1993
Curated by: Keith Whittle and Margherita Gramegna
Supported by: Film London
Country: United Kingdom