In 1986 the controversial film-maker Derek Jarman discovered he was HIV positive, and decided to make a garden at his cottage on the bleak coast of Dungeness, where he also wrote these journals. Looking back over his childhood, his "coming out" in the 1960s and his cinema career, the book is at once a volume of autobiography, a lament for a lost generation and a celebration of homosexuality.

The filmmaker noted for Sebastiane and Edward II , among other works, discusses his life and art, detailing his sexual awakening, the libidinous excesses of the sixties, his experiences in gay culture, and more.

The filmmaker noted for Sebastiane and Edward II , among other works, discusses his life and art, detailing his sexual awakening, the libidinous excesses of the sixties, his experiences in gay culture, and more.

Chroma is a meditation on the color spectrum by the celebrated late artist and filmmaker Derek Jarman. From the explosions of image and color in In The Shadow of the Sun, The Last of England, The Garden and Wittgenstein, to the somber blacks of his collages and tar paintings, Jarman has consistently used color in unprecedented ways, making his ideas on the subject of interest to filmmakers, film audiences, artists and students alike. Blue, his most personal and innovative film, consists of a compelling soundtrack accompanied by a monochrome blue image and is, among other things, a comment on Jarman's diminishing eyesight due to AIDS. In his signature style, a lyrical combination of classical theory, anecdote, and poetry, Jarman takes the reader through the spectrum, introducing each color as an embodiment of an emotion, evoking memories or dreams. He explains the use of color in Medieval painting through the Renaissance to the modernists and draws on the great color theorists from Pliny to Leonardo. He writes too about the meanings of color in literature, science, philosophy, psychology, religion and alchemy. Read either as a work on color, or a distillation of Jarman's artistic vision, Chroma presents an exciting perspective on the subject.

When journalist Justine Picardie lost her sister Ruth to breast cancer in 2000, she yearned to conjure a voice from the vast silence, to fill the space left by her sister's absence. Over the years that followed, she sought out psychics, mediums, and an array of ancient and modern methods of contacting the other side. It was a year filled with skepticism and belief, emotion and intellect, darkness and light-a personal and sometimes painful search for the afterlife in an age of reason.

Derek Jarman's Smiling in Slow Motion concludes the journey started in Modern Nature, these previously unpublished journals stretch from May 1991 until a fortnight before his death in February 1994. Part diary, part observation, part memoir, Jarman writes with his familiar honesty, wry humour and acuity. Friends, collaborators and enemies are catalogued as he races through his last year painting, film-making, gardening, and annoying his targets through his involvement in radical politics.
Writing from his Charing Cross Road flat, on his visits to international film festivals, his world famous garden at Dungeness in Kent, and finally from his bed in St Bartholomew's Hospital, Jarman illuminates an era which seems more ephemeral and out-of-grasp with each passing day.
Smiling in Slow Motion is not a document of illness, regret and resignation, but one of endeavour, remembrance and love.

Iconoclastic and controversial filmmaker Derek Jarman’s candid journals
“Epiphanies infuse Modern Nature, Derek Jarman’s diaries from 1989 to 1990, with their ebullient evocations of gardening. For Jarman, planting flowers at his wind- and sea-blasted cottage and then reciting their names (endlessly, passionately) becomes sex, becomes the fullness he’s on his way to leaving as he grows sicker from AIDS.” —Village Voice Literary Supplement
“The pace of Jarman’s life as chronicled in Modern Nature is unpredictable. In more energetic moments, Jarman cruises the public parks, makes a film without a script (The Last of England, 1987), and attempts to get Matt Dillon’s heartbeat for a project. He plants saxifrage and sea kale. He starts taking AZT. When Jarman discovered he was seropositive, he set himself a goal: to disclose his status and survive Margaret Thatcher. These he has done with aplomb.” —Artforum
“Courageous stuff.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Modern Nature is a wonderful essay in decorative evasion. . . . The twenty months Jarman covers are filled with artful flashbacks to his childhood, earlier film career, and homosexual history. Few frontline details about the life, work, and daily thoughts of the director of Sebastiane, Caravaggio, and The Garden have been left out.” —Financial Times
One of England’s foremost filmmakers, Derek Jarman (1942–1994) wrote and directed several feature films, including Sebastiane, Jubilee, Caravaggio, and Blue, as well as numerous short films and music videos. He was a stage designer, artist, writer, gardener, and an outspoken AIDS and queer rights activist in the United Kingdom and the United States. He wrote several books, among them At Your Own Risk and Chroma, forthcoming from the University of Minnesota Press.

Written between May 1991 and February 1994, and ending just two weeks before his death from an AIDS-related illness , Derek Jarman’s entries in Smiling in Slow Motion pick up where Modern Nature left off. Friends and enemies are reviewed as he races through his last years painting, filmmaking, gardening, and annoying his targets through his involvement in radical politics. Infused throughout with familiar honesty and wry humor, Smiling in Slow Motion is a document of endeavor, remembrance, and love.

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY OLIVIA LAING
In 1986 Derek Jarman discovered he was HIV positive and decided to make a garden at his cottage on the barren coast of Dungeness. Facing an uncertain future, he nevertheless found solace in nature, growing all manner of plants. While some perished beneath wind and sea-spray others flourished, creating brilliant, unexpected beauty in the wilderness.
Modern Nature is both a diary of the garden and a meditation by Jarman on his own life: his childhood, his time as a young gay man in the 1960s, his renowned career as an artist, writer and film-maker. It is at once a lament for a lost generation, an unabashed celebration of gay sexuality, and a devotion to all that is living.

Chroma is a meditation on the color spectrum by the celebrated late artist and filmmaker Derek Jarman. From the explosions of image and color in In The Shadow of the Sun, The Last of England, The Garden and Wittgenstein, to the somber blacks of his collages and tar paintings, Jarman has consistently used color in unprecedented ways, making his ideas on the subject of interest to filmmakers, film audiences, artists and students alike. Blue, his most personal and innovative film, consists of a compelling soundtrack accompanied by a monochrome blue image and is, among other things, a comment on Jarman's diminishing eyesight due to AIDS. In his signature style, a lyrical combination of classical theory, anecdote, and poetry, Jarman takes the reader through the spectrum, introducing each color as an embodiment of an emotion, evoking memories or dreams. He explains the use of color in Medieval painting through the Renaissance to the modernists and draws on the great color theorists from Pliny to Leonardo. He writes too about the meanings of color in literature, science, philosophy, psychology, religion and alchemy. Read either as a work on color, or a distillation of Jarman's artistic vision, Chroma presents an exciting perspective on the subject.

A collection of Derek Jarman filmscripts which, with the exception of "Jubilee", were never filmed.