Blue + Chinese Series

Director: Derek Jarman, Stan Brakhage

1993 / 81min / 35mm

Over the same, unceasing monochromatic sea of blue, Yves Klein’s patented “International Klein Blue,” the voices of Jarman and collaborating actors (including Tilda Swinton and Nigel Terry) read a poetic text by the director in which he muses on the physical and mental deterioration wrought by the ravages of AIDS, as well as the endless implications of the color blue. Jarman would be gone within a year, but he left behind one of the great final films, a vibrant work of courage and clarity in the face of oblivion. Screens with Brakhage’s Chinese Series, a long-contemplated short work inspired by Chinese ideograms completed in the filmmaker’s dying days.

Distributor: Zeitgeist Films, Canyon Cinema

35mm print of Blue courtesy of Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research

35mm print of Chinese Series courtesy of Canyon Cinema

Part of Last Testaments