I've written a piece about Derek Jarman's book
At Your Own Risk (recently republished by the University of Minnesota along with some of the director's other writings) over at
The House Next Door. The first paragraph is excerpted below; follow the link to the House to read the full article, which attempts to grapple with Jarman's views about aesthetics, sexuality, AIDS, and societal oppression.
Derek Jarman's films are, already, such a naked, passionate, intimate portrait of their creator and his ideas that one wouldn't expect that Jarman would have had much energy left over to pour into written autobiography. Nevertheless, Jarman was a prolific writer as well as a filmmaker and artist, and his creative pursuits in multiple artistic forms constitute a unified body of work; the books are every bit as essential as the films to those who wish to understand Jarman. The University of Minnesota Press has thus done a valuable service in reissuing three of these books: Chroma, Jarman's collection of writings on color, his 1989-90 diary Modern Nature, and At Your Own Risk: A Saint's Testament, a loose autobiographical book that traces Jarman's experiences of society's reactions to gayness.
Continue reading at the House Next Door