Tag Archives: narration


Derek Jarman

jarman_blue

Derek Jarman‘s ‘Blue’ (1993)

Blue is Jarman’s final feature film, released four months before his death from AIDS-related complications. The disease had already rendered him partially blind at the time of the film’s release.

The film was his last testament as a film-maker, and consists of a single shot of saturated blue colour filling the screen, as background to a soundtrack where Jarman’s and some of his favourite actors’ narration describes his life and vision.


Tina & David Meltzer

Lamentation for Hank Williams

If I can’t finish writing a song in ten minutes then it ain’t worth the finishing,
   said Hank to a reporter.
A camera was busy taking pictures for LIFE magazine.

–I’ll never get out of this world alive,
wrote Hank in a song
sung for millions at The Grand Ole Opry
published by Acuff-Rose Sales Inc.
recorded by MGM records

flat-picking his D-28
backed up by The Drifting Cowboys
night after night & during the days
playing at picnics, rallies
supermarket gala openings

–There’s no dreams but bad ones,
Hank told his wife Audrey
who told her lover who told the doctor
who could not heal him

places no longer places
velocity of faces
& he burned down, died at 29 of an overdose
kindly rocked to sleep in the back seat of his Cadillac
being driven to a concert
New Year’s Day 1953

by Tina & David Meltzer (listen here)


Vaast Colson

‘Though a lie be swift, the truth overtakes it. Ten fibs I told as a child’ (2006) by Vaast Colson

Ten lies Vaast Colson told as a child were printed on 500 white balloons. Each balloon is accompanied by a mini-disc on which Colson explains the project and a signed and numbered information card. During the opening the balloons were filled with helium and released. The people who found a balloon were invited to send a photograph of themselves with the balloon. The most distant balloon thus far was found at 770 km from Antwerp.