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Derek Jarman’s Blue (1993) is a film without images—just a luminous ultramarine field and an evocative soundtrack. Made as he was dying of AIDS-related illness, Blue resists spectacle, embracing abstraction, memory, and loss. Thirty years on, it continues to evolve, expanding across artists, mediums, and generations.
Blue (1993) is a continuous, seventy-nine-minute shot of ultramarine blue, with a soundtrack of spoken word, found sounds, and composed music. It was Derek Jarman’s (1941‒94) final work. The film first screened just eight months before Jarman died on 19 February 1994 from AIDS-related illness at London’s St Bartholomew's Hospital, the setting where much of the film’s narrative takes place.
Saint Blue: The Afterlife of Derek Jarman’s Blue by Chelsea Hopper and Shaune Lakin is featured in full in Issue 1 of Memo magazine.
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Chelsea Hopper is a curator and writer whose research centres on modern and contemporary photography. She recently completed a PhD in Curatorial Practice at Monash University, examining the intersection of populism and contemporary art. She is Art Director of Memo Magazine.
