From Peter Wollen’s essay on Jarman’s Blue, recently published in Paris/Manhattan and quoted at length on In Search of The Miraculous, one of Brian Sholis’s millions of projects:
However, there were more specific reasons for Jarman’s growing fascination with Klein. Jarman always had an ambivalent relationship with film and particularly, as we have seen, with television. Towards the end of his life he made it clear that he was only interested in films which were deeply personal, which were about the film-maker’s own life. Blue is just such an autobiographical film, dealing with Aids directly as an experience lived by its maker. Blue was the colour Jarman saw when eye-drops were put in his eyes in the hope of alleviating his blindness. Paradoxically, blindness allowed Jarman to see, beyond the distraction of images, directly into the realm of colour, as Yves Klein had wished. Aids was too important to Jarman for it to be represented by images.
Peter Wollen on Derek Jarman’s Blue [In Search of The Miraculous]
Buy Paris/Manhattan in paperback or hardcover [Amazon]
Buy the soundtrack to Blue and stare at VIDEO 2 on your TV. [Amazon]
How odd. I wrote about Blue almost this exact day two years ago.