Is this really a 35mm print of Derek Jarman’s Blue, no frames or nothin’?
Thanks to art historian A.V. Marraccini, I saw this Doc Films at the University of Chicago using this image to promote a screening of Blue this week.
2013 was my last exercise to understand how Jarman made Blue blue. Early live performances used a filmed loop of an Yves Klein painting. That was replaced by a blue gel. Rowland Wymer’s 2006 book said the blue was “electronically produced,” which, if the image above is to be accepted, means it was not filmed in camera, but on the film stock itself.
Perhaps it is far past time to make some actual inquiries instead of just poking around in books.
[a little later update: In 2014, Mason Yeaver-Lap wrote about Blue, “a film without film,” and how the Walker Art Center exhibited it on a loop in a gallery. Though the museum has a 35mm print, for conservation reasons, they went with, “a flickering projector (aided by a piece of kit called T’he Flicker-O-Meter,’ whose manual can be found in the Walker archives) [which] would beam through a projection window coated with a blue gel. This filmless projector would thus throw a perfectly IKB shade, accompanied by a CD dub of the soundtrack. Again, Blue was a film without film.”
FWIW, this blog post will be the second mention on the internet of the “Flicker-O-Meter. We’re gonna need to see that manual.
This really is my Saturday night. DVDBeaver has technical information on the various DVD and Blu-Ray releases of Blue, and the greatest set of screencaps the medium has ever produced.]
Previously, very related: International Jarman Blue