Last Wednesday we brought you an interview with filmmaker Ira Sachs, who is co-curating the Queer/Art/Film series at 92YTribeca—a celebration of all things hybrid and polysexual. This week we have an interview with filmmaker Matt Wolf (Wild Combination) who is presenting Derek Jarman’s Blue on Thursday as part of the series. A film Geoff Brown of The Times (London) was quoted as saying: “There is nothing in cinema history to match this: a film at once so abstract, yet so intensely and painfully personal.”

Derek Jarman has such an impressive body of work. What made you choose Blue, the very last film he made?
Derek’s body of work is pretty astounding… Mostly because of its incredible visual experimentation. Blue is Derek’s last film, and it was made after he lost his eye sight as a result of AIDS-related illness.  The film is a continuous blue screen with a complex audioscape.  I think it’s really powerful and moving that Derek persisted to make work right up to his death.  I knew this series at the 92Y would be an opportunity to screen a rare 35mm print.  And this film doesn’t translate on video— it can only be experienced on film.  It’s very hypnotic and transporting to see light projected through blue celluloid and to experience this absorbing audio in a theater environment with other people.  And the few prints of the film that do exist have millions of scratches on the emulsion, which only intensifies over time.  So in a way, this final film is always changing.

Read the full interview, including Matt’s response to the question, “What does “Queer” mean to you?”, below:

What techniques or themes have you borrowed from Jarman’s style for your own films?
I was always impressed with the way that Derek used Super 8 in narrative contexts… To sketch out visual and storytelling ideas and as explosive visual substance.  It’s been exciting that his Super 8 films have been more widely seen recently.  I also love Derek’s sense of historical role-playing and historical revision.  Those impulses definitely inspire my own filmmaking— dealing with the past from a queer perspective and experimental visual storytelling.

For your first feature,Wild Combination, you focused on another icon, musician Arthur Russell. What compelled you to tell his story?
I got really obsessed with Arthur Russell’s music after a friend described him to me as, “a gay disco auteur who would ride the Staten Island Ferry listening to mixes of his own cassettes.” I saw Arthur as a gay outsider and as an unsung cultural icon, whose work touched on so many intriguing strains of the avant-garde and the downtown New York scene of the 1980s.  That cultural history mixed with his fascinating biography got me started.

The style you used for your documentary complimented the music of Arthur Russell very well. Did you have a few ideas of how you wanted to tell this story from the start of the filmmaking process, or did it take shape over time?
I didn’t know what I was doing when I started Wild Combination… At first I wanted to make an experimental film that just used Arthur’s music.  But then when I met his partner Tom Lee and his parents in Iowa, I realized that the biographical dimension needed to be explored.  Intimate interviews lead me toward a more conventional documentary-biography form.  But the incredible music lent itself well to unusual visual interpretation. 

The use of the term Queer seems wide reaching nowadays, not restricted to “gay” individuals. For instance, we have heard it used by heterosexual people who identify as Queer, which implies definitions aside from sexual. Do you agree? What does “Queer” mean to you?
I think Queer is a political and cultural term.  It’s used in a lot of contexts to historicize or describe certain cultural material or artists, and for that reason I think a lot of people continue to identify with the term.  The initial impulse to reclaim this negative slur was very political.  But I don’t really think it’s politically provocative to use the term Queer now— for straight or gay people.  I guess when I hear people use the term queer, I understand that they’re framing their experience or identity against the grain of mainstream gay culture.  I appreciate that… Mainstream gay culture is really boring. 

(Photo via: The Moment)

Upcoming Films at 92YTribeca: