Derek Jarman's journey is one of marked by flashes of brilliance, not only for its formal originality and social irreverence, but also for its premature interruption due to AIDS. Avant-garde, exuberant, poetic, and pictorial, his work is as abundant as his life was as an icon of the British underground and tireless advocate for the queer cause. It constitutes a unique and captivating world, much like the garden that the artist created in Kent to live out his final years and conceive his ultimate creations.
In Blue, a true testament film, Jarman shares parts of his diary as he talks about his illness and his treatments for AIDS. Against a uniform blue background, we hear him in voice-over, as well as other actors reading his texts.
Derek Jarman
Born in England in 1942, Derek Jarman studied art at King's College London and later at the Slade School of Fine Art. He began his career in cinema as a production designer on the set of Ken Russell's The Devils. Throughout the 1970s, he emerged as both a queer activist and a significant figure in the underground scene with his filmmaking journey that started in 1976 with Sebastiane. Then, two events defined 1986 for Jarman: the success of Caravaggio (which introduced actress Tilda Swinton) at the Berlinale, and the announcement of his HIV diagnosis, a revelation he chose to make public. With the support of his friend Keith Collins, he then moved to live in a cottage in Kent where he created a unique garden and produced his final works, including his testamentary film, Blue, completed in 1993, a few months before his death.
