Blue Films

BLUE! Sometimes we see the world in sky blue, sometimes it is characterised by "blue" melancholy, while at the same time we enjoy the "blue hour" between the evening or morning twilight. The basic colour blue (the term derives from the Old High German "blao" for shimmering or shining) is perceived as a very special colour stimulus - also in cinema films, especially extreme in Derek Jarman's last film "Blue" (1993): Throughout the film, one sees nothing but a blue screen, accompanied by passages from Jarman's diaries, as documents of the fulfilled hope of no longer having to face death. "Blue becomes the colour of harmony, in which the contradictions of life and the sufferings of the body are suspended." (filmdienst) We associate much more with blue: as the ice-blue cold of the wintry sky, as an endless expanse above a vast, no less and yet quite different blue sea, as a symbol of loyalty, harmony, longing and contentment. Nothing seems more contradictory to this than the blue of melancholy, almost like the blues in music, which stands for dreary moods full of pensiveness and melancholy. In the films of this collection, blue appears in concrete and/or symbolically transferred colours and shades. Unlike red, it is supposed to calm and strengthen our concentration. Try out whether and how much of this the films convey!