Modern Nature, in post-production 2026 

Modern Nature presents a series of portraits of couples and individuals, filmed in public spaces on an academic campus. Here, performers collectively rehearse a script comprising passages from Jeannette Winterson’s Written on the Body (1992) and Derek Jarman’s Modern Nature (1991). Written within a year of one another during the 1980s culture wars, a period marked by the hostilities of Thatcherism and government denial of the AIDS epidemic, Winterson’s and Jarman’s texts provide a framework for reflection in the present, engaging with the bifurcation of politics and illness and the exploration of spaces for queerness and desire as respite. As sources for a moving-image work, these writings offer a vantage point for scripting, production, and on-screen performance, filtered through attention, interpretation, and relation. As a poetic recording of this collective reading, the film constructs a provisional space of textual re- articulation and approaches rehearsal as a form of worldmaking with feminist, queer, and socialist lineages.

Directed by Rita Ferrando
Producer Candice Napoleone

Cinematography John Ker

Editor Andrea Franco

Sound Designer & Mixer Stefana Fratila

Cast Julia Hendrickson, Saffron Maeve, Mauricio Diaz, Iman Bundu, Chloe Leblanc, Susannah Height, and Camille Rojas

Assistant Director Beth Warrian

1st AC Felipe López Gómez

2nd AC Ashley Mach

Camera Trainee Evan Park

Location Sound Recordist Ian Reynolds

Costume Designer Jackie Knight

Production Assistant Özge Dîlan Arslan

Film Lab MELS

Special Thanks Smoking Vintage

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