Neil Bartlett vividly remembers his first glimpse of Derek Jarman’s work: covertly watching the film Sebastiane (Latin dialogue, glistening flesh). “How I managed to do that without my mum and dad finding out,” he marvels. “I was captivated. That’s when Derek became public property – Mary Whitehouse and her cohorts were frothing at the mouth. And my young man’s cultural gaydar went: ‘Oh, what’s this?’”
As a painter, writer and film-maker, Jarman was a unique figure in British culture: an icon of the Thatcher years who defied all they stood for. He never hid his sexuality, and nor did he hide his Aids diagnosis, despite the snarling hatred shown towards people living with the disease. His final film, Blue, premiered in June 1993, less than a year before his death. Over a static, unchanging shot of Yves Klein blue, Jarman and some of his long-serving collaborators narrate a text that is scoured by illness, fired by fury and radiated by lyricism. The film plays like a sound collage, a meditation on love, loss and the colour blue as the director comes to terms with his illness and loss of sight (he can only see in shades of blue) yet retains his ardent intensity. “Our lives will run,” Jarman insists, “like sparks through the stubble.”
