Smiling in Slow Motion : Journals, 1991–1994

Author: Derek Jarman

Films, cinema

Published on 2 August 2018 by Vintage Publishing (Vintage Classics) in the United Kingdom as part of 'The Journals of Derek Jarman' series.

Paperback | 432 pages
129 x 197 x 31mm | 304g

'The life-affirming expression of an artist engaged in living to the full' The Times Smiling in Slow Motion is Derek Jarman's last journal, stretching from May 1991 until a fortnight before his death in February 1994. Jarman writes with his trademark humour and candour about friends and enemies, as he races through his final years of film-making, gardening and radical political protest.

Written from Jarman's Charing Cross Road flat, his famed garden at Dungeness, and finally from his bed in St Bartholomew's Hospital, Jarman meditates on his own deteriorating health and the loss of his contemporaries. Yet Smiling in Slow Motion is not simply a chronicle of illness and regret: it is, at its heart, one of endeavour, determination and pride.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY NEIL BARTLETT