Philip Ewe (United Kingdom)
Derek Jarman Blue 76mins, 1993
Derek Jarman’s Blue is a spoken word film heard against an unchanging frame of ultramarine blue that fills the screen.
Blue’s monologue scripted by Jarman is poetic and observational as Jarman’s anecdotes from London street life and those around him mix with memories and his frictional responses to the hospital visits to receive treatment for HIV all shift into each other without intro or footnoting.
Scenes occasionally include sound affects to set a scene and music which includes harps and electronic set tone as interludes and backgrounds through his dominating monologue and segments spoken by actors and collaborators Tilda Swinton, John Quentin and Nigel Terry.
Throughout the 76 minutes that Blue runs for the screen stays the same flat ultramarine blue and the colour is connected throughout.
Although large parts of the voiceover are original verse, the overriding content is Derek Jarman’s bleak, sharp and poetic commentary of the loss of his eyesight and the climate of AIDS where sufferers are hopelessly stranded with drugs that are not saving lives and a society that is ignorant and detached from HIV sufferers. All this is textured by Jarman's slow, somber and gravelled voice describing his own despair and anger at his imminent death.
NEW
1. You are looking at a big bunch of fresh flowers sitting on the ground: a sunflower, a few tall gladioli, two large tropical leaves spanning out to either side, a large bud-like tropical flower. They are sitting on the ground in water in half a plastic bottle that leans in a wonky fit inside a sloppy surfaced plaster vessel about 30cm tall. There are two other bunches of flowers in two other similarly clumsy shaped vessels, one of them on top of a stool with a table top behind it, one in front of a 2.5m block of polystyrene, all three are near walls. The room has untreated floor boards, white walls, two strip lights and a shop front window. A seven foot tall big-bummed plasture figure that has an Orangina bottle placed in a cubby hole in its side is away from the wall and there are five A3 sized watercolours of rain drops shapes behind it, all of mainly dark blue shades. Opposite is an abstract A3 watercolour, more pointed in style.
2. This is a piece of white polyester fabric 43cm across and 75cm down with unfinished edges, pinned in its top left and right corners by woodwork pins. It has been printed on with large swirls of paint, mostly dark purple and green lines of varying dilutions, opaque in parts and more transparent in others. A greyish turquoise is underneath and all the swirls of colour cross over each other in a 30 by 40 cm patch which has then been reprinted again at different angles. The texture of the fabric remains flat and unchanged across the surface and there are still gaps that show the white polyester underneath. The middle top line dips from its pin pointed corners and the fabric hangs down at the bottom. Overall it is almost entirely uncreased but has enough creases that it is not completely flat.
3. This is a colour c-type photograph which fills a white wooden box frame, the frame is 22cm across and 33cm across and 3.5 deep, the photograph sits 1.5cm inside it and its edges come close to the frame. The photograph is of a girl in her early twenties reacting and looking outside the frame of the camera with an ambiguously dramatic expression in her face, possibly of shock, mouth open, eyes wide. She is sitting down on a sofa or armchair and the photograph has been taken from floor level, her body is pulled in and she is hunched over slightly with her hands held between her legs and is wearing a denim top with black trousers. The photograph is tightly cropped and the place feels domestic, the wall behind the girl is a creamy shade, slightly in the shadow of the flash that’s on the girl. It looks like an unstaged casually taken photograph taken amongst friends.
FIRST DRAFT
1. You are looking at a big bunch of fresh flowers sitting on the ground: a sunflower, a few tall gladioli, two large tropical leaves spanning out to either side, a large bud-like tropical flower. They are sitting on the ground in water in half a plastic bottle that leans in a wonky fit inside a sloppy surfaced plaster vessel about 30cm tall. There are two other bunches of flowers in two other similarly clumsy shaped vessels, one of them on top of a stool with a table top behind it, one in front of a 2.5m block of polystyrene, all three are near walls. The room has untreated floor boards, white walls, two strip lights and a shop front window. A seven foot tall big-bummed plasture figure that has an Orangina bottle placed in a cubby hole in its side is away from the wall and there are five A3 sized watercolours of rain drops shapes behind it, all of mainly dark blue shades. Opposite is an abstract A3 watercolour, more pointed in style.
2. This is a piece of white polyester fabric 43cm across and 75cm down, pinned in its top left and right corners by pins. It has been printed on with large swirls of paint, mostly dark purple and green lines of varying dilutions, opaque in parts, more opaque in others. A greyish turquoise is underneath and all the swirls of colour cross over each other in a single patch which has then been reprinted again at different angles. The texture of the fabric remains flat and unchanged across the surface and there are still gaps that show the white polyester underneath. The middle top line dips from its pin pointed corners and the fabric hangs down at the bottom. Overall it is almost entirely uncreased but has enough creases it is not completely flat.
3. This is a colour c-type photograph which fills a white wooden box frame, the frame is 22cm across and 33cm across and 3.5 deep, the photograph sits 1.5cm inside it and its edges come close to the frame. The photograph is of a girl in her early twenties reacting and looking outside the frame of the camera with an ambiguously dramatic expression in her face, possibly of shock, mouth open, eyes wide. She is wearing a denim top and her hands are between her legs, in black trousers. The photograph is tightly cropped and the place feels domestic, the wall behind the girl is a creamy shade, slightly in the shadow of the flash that’s on the girl. It looks like an unstaged casually taken photograph taken amongst friends.