Shown as part of True/False Film Fest’s “True Vision Award,” this structure-defying film gives audiences a heartbreaking look into director Derek Jarman’s experience with AIDS during the 1990s
Each year, True/False Film Fest invites the recipient of the fest’s “True Vision Award,” an accolade annually given to a director or directing team for their work in advancing nonfiction filmmaking, to select a film that has profoundly influenced their work. This year, winner Hu Sanshou selected Derek Jarman’s 1993 film “Blue,” which screened on 35-millimeter at Ragtag Cinema on March 1.
“Blue” is less of a traditionally structured film and more of a sonic landscape. Instead of utilising moving pictures, Jarman projects a single blue frame onto the screen for the film’s entire 76-minute runtime. His narration, accompanied by ethereally haunting music, composed by musician Simon Fisher Turner, details Jarman’s personal experience with AIDS and his encroaching loss of vision as a symptom of the syndrome.
Jarman’s narration mainly focuses on intense descriptions of his time spent in hospital waiting rooms filled with other patients who are dying, undergoing light therapy in an attempt to restore his eyesight, or in his hospital bed with a DGPH drip in his arm. Jarman has to be dripped with this drug – which contains a litany of side effects that he reads out one by one, each more horrifying than the last – twice a day.
Intertwined with these uncomfortable medical scenes are stories of Jarman’s experiences growing up as a gay man. While these stories are hyper-specific to his own life, I found myself relating to his feelings about growing up LGBTQ+.
Jarman’s recounting of his first time meeting an openly gay woman – his 70-year-old boss he called “Punch” who rode a Harley Davidson motorcycle and looked like Édith Piaf – transported me back to when I was a teenager, scared and unsure of myself, desperate to meet any older LGBTQ+ person who could offer me guidance.
This story about his boss reminded me of the unparalleled joy of finally feeling seen and the hope that comes with meeting older queer people. If they could live a long, meaningful life despite society’s cruelty, so can I.
Despite these reminders of the joys that can be found in queer life, the overwhelming feeling I had while watching the film was anger.
“Blue” is not a story of survival or beating the odds. It’s a film about a man slowly suffering from, and eventually dying from a syndrome that was routinely downplayed by many who it did not directly affect.
Jarman died four months after the film’s release. His narration directly names five of his friends who also died because of AIDS. On a larger scale, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 100,777 people in the United States died due to the syndrome between 1981-90.
“I have no friends now who are not dead or dying,” Jarman said in the film. “Like a blue frost, it caught them.”
In between poetic stanzas reflecting on life and death, Jarman expressed anger at the unaffected’s continued dissolution of AIDS/HIV. According to the film, three-quarters of organizations focused on preventing AIDS were still failing to provide information on safe sex practices during the height of the epidemic, and many attempting to raise awareness about AIDS were opting for an overly optimistic outlook on the syndrome.
To Jarman, the AIDS epidemic was “appropriated by the well.” The severity of the epidemic seemed to be lost in pursuit of an overly-theatrical narrative about overcoming.
In my mind, it is almost impossible not to draw parallels between the wide-spread disregard for those affected by AIDS, which Jarman depicts in “Blue,” and the struggle for legislative protections that LGBTQ+ communities – especially people who are transgender – are facing in the current day.
As the increasingly present anti-trans rhetoric in U.S. politics turns into anti-trans legislation, I find myself increasingly scared for my LGBTQ+ siblings. Our people are suffering, and yet, much like Jarman explained his frustration toward in his narration, the U.S. government presses on unbothered by the harm it causes.
“Blue” is a reminder that ignoring the struggles faced by LGBTQ+ people does not negate them. Jarman ends the film with a poem dedicated to his partner H.B., who saw his own health decline due to AIDS around the same time Jarman did.
Jarman reflects not on physical pain or his sight deterioration, but rather the love he shared with H.B. It’s a reminder that, behind all the medical jargon, statistics and political talking points, are people who are searching for the same thing as everybody else – love.
“Kiss me,” Jarman said in this final stanza. “On the lips, on the eyes.”
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Edited by Mikalah Owens | mowens@themaneater.comCopy edited by Emma Short | eshort@themaneater.comEdited by Emilia Hansen | ehansen@themaneater.comEdited by Emily Skidmore | eskidmore@themaneater.com