Smiling in Slow Motion

By Derek Jarman

Book Overview

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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0816674531
• ISBN13: 9780816674534
• Release Date: March 2011
• Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.4" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Uncompromising and honest

Published journals by their very nature can be dull and opaque. If you're not familiar with the author's creative work and life it's easy to get lost in a forest of names and references which leaves you feeling bored and alienated. For this reason, journals generally dissaude you from reading them cover to cover though they may be quite illuminating when dipped into. That's not the case with this, the final volume of Jarman's journals. The way he writes is so direct and frank that it is utterly compelling. I didn't want to skip any of it. Jarman's uncompromising approach to art and life must have alienated a lot of people (on the margins as well as in the mainstream). Good! We need to be shaken up. Jarman shows his courage here but also his vulnerability. The journals are never mawkish or sentimental, but they left me greatly moved. Jarman continued to work on films, books and paintings while dealing with the daily burden of HIV-related illness and this book documents that process. It's also very much about the people who surrounded him and the things he liked to do, particularly in relation to his cottage and the unique and celebrated garden at Dungeness. Vale, Derek. I wish I could have told you how much I admire you.