Moving Image: Derek Jarman
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. Made in 1993, the film reduces the visual field to a single, uninterrupted expanse of Yves Klein blue, accompanied by a densely layered soundtrack of voices, music and sound effects. Against this unchanging image, Jarman reflects on memory, illness, desire, friendship and mortality.
Diagnosed with HIV in 1986 and facing deteriorating health and blindness, Jarman transformed his personal experience into a lyrical meditation on life and death. The soundtrack moves between everyday observations and fantastical images, recalling London streets, coffee and newspapers alongside visions of distant places and shifting fields of colour. Blue remains one of Jarman’s most powerful works, using the limitations of the image to open an expansive space for memory, imagination and emotional experience.
Derek Jarman (1942–1994) was an English artist and filmmaker whose multidisciplinary 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 exhibitions and film programmes, including 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), Radical Landscapes at Tate Liverpool (2022), and Digging in Another Time: Derek Jarman’s Modern Nature at the Hunterian Art Gallery, Glasgow (2024). His work has also been presented at Take Ninagawa, Tokyo (2023), Gus Fisher Gallery, Auckland (2024), and UNSW Galleries, Sydney (2025).
Year: 2015
Artist: Derek Jarman
Year of Film Production: 1993
Curated by: Keith Whittle and Margherita Gramegna
Supported by: Film London
Country: United Kingdom