Directed by Derek Jarman | UK | 79 min
Perhaps the best-known monochrome film in the history of cinema, Derek Jarman’s Blue is a profound audiovisual experiment, foregoing conventional representation to offer a single, saturated frame of Yves Klein blue. Far from a static work, however, Jarman’s project is also an intricate and affecting auditory collage, combining voice-over narration (read by actors John Quentin, Nigel Terry, and Tilda Swinton, and the filmmaker himself), music, and ambient sound elements. Released four months before the filmmaker’s death from AIDS-related complications, Blue is a landmark achievement of the New Queer Cinema. As Jarman scholar Jim Ellis has observed, this closing work “raises the issue of art’s responsibility to life, and the potential of art to effect change.” Blue yields an experience of cinema like no other, formulating a rich reflection on life, loss, and the possibilities of the medium itself.
In collaboration with the University of Calgary's Film Department
Part of our Final Frames Series.
Partner:
In the spirit of respect, reciprocity and truth, we honour and acknowledge that this screening takes place on Moh’kinsstis and the traditional Treaty 7 territory, as well as the oral practices of the Blackfoot confederacy: Siksika, Kainai, Piikani as well as the Îyâxe Nakoda and Tsuut’ina nations. We acknowledge that this territory is home to the Otipemisiwak Métis Government of the Métis Nation within Alberta District 6. Finally, we acknowledge all Nations, Indigenous and non, who live, work and play, as well as help steward this land, honour and celebrate this territory.