In the Shadow of the Sun

I may have seen this before at the local cinematheque back in the 80s — but I’m not sure. Jarman did more than a couple of movies based on speeding up/slowing down old Super 8 films and editing them together with an interesting soundtrack… so this seems familiar, but not hugely so.

I wonder how they approached restoring this for the bluray… The movie (which is 35mm, I’m guessing) was composed from 8mm originals, I think? Which is super grainy, and there’s a lot of dust and stuff… but that was reproduced by Jarman deliberately, so you don’t want to edit that out. But you do want to get rid of the artefacts from the degraded 35mm print.

I guess you just er wing it?

This looks really good, though.

And it’s rather fascinating. Without the soundtrack by Throbbing Gristle, though, it would have been a very different film.

It’s… contemplative.

If I really did see this back when I was a student, I would have felt very cultured indeed — I mean, watching an abstract movie like this surely deserves a lot of cultural brownie points!

And I guess I still feel like that? But I do like this one anyway. Even if there are no bragging rights attached these days.

In the Shadow of the Sun. Derek Jarman. 1981. ⚄