Dancing Ledge

Britain's most controversial independent filmmaker, Derek Jarman, gives an explosive account of his life and art spanning over forty years. From his sexual awakening in post-war rural England to the libidinous excesses of the sixties and beyond, Jarman tells his story with an in-your-face immediacy that has become his trademark style in both films and books. His explorations take him from England to Italy, New York to Amsterdam, giving us a rapid succession of intimate and often graphic slices of his life. "Sexuality colors my politics", Jarman writes in a section entitled Blow Job. But this is a journey into artistic as well as sexual discovery. In these pages we see Jarman's imagination at work during the making of Sebastiane, Jubilee, The Tempest, and Caravaggio. Finally, there are nearly one hundred beautifully explicit black-and-white photographs of Jarman, his friends, lovers and inspirational heroes of gay culture.