Isaac Julien

Isaac Julien

Born: February 21, 1960
in East End, London, England, UK
Filmmaker and installation artist, Isaac Julien was born in 1960 in London, where he currently lives and works. His multi-screen film installations and photographs incorporate different artistic disciplines to create a poetic and unique visual language. His 1989 documentary-drama exploring author Langston Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance titled Looking for Langston garnered Julien a cult following while his 1991 debut feature Young Soul Rebels won the Semaine de la Critique prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

Movies for Isaac Julien...

Scala!!!
Title: Scala!!!
Character: Self
Released: January 5, 2024
Type: Movie
This feature-length big screen documentary tells the riotous inside story of the infamous sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll repertory cinema which inspired a generation during Britain's turbulent Thatcher years.
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Kill Your TV: Jim Moir’s Weird World of Video Art
Title: Kill Your TV: Jim Moir’s Weird World of Video Art
Released: November 24, 2019
Type: Movie
Jim Moir (aka Vic Reeves) explores Video Art, revealing how different generations ‘hacked’ the tools of television to pioneer new ways of creating art that can be beautiful, bewildering and wildly experimental.
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Queer as Art
Title: Queer as Art
Character: Himself
Released: July 27, 2017
Type: Movie
Documentary celebrating the LGBTQ contribution to the arts in Britain in the 50 years since decriminalisation. It features interviews with leading figures from right across the arts in Britain, including Stephen Fry, David Hockney, Sir Antony Sher, Alan Cumming, Sandi Toksvig, Jeanette Winterson, Will Young and Alan Hollinghurst, and it explores the distinctive perspectives and voices that LGBT artists have brought to British cultural life.
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Lost Boundaries
Title: Lost Boundaries
Released: January 1, 2003
Type: Movie
Lost Boundaries is comprised of footage shot by Julien on location, in England in the summer of 1985, during the making of the Sankofa film and video collective's first experimental feature film The Passion of Remembrance (1986), which he co-directed with Maureen Blackwood, another member of the collective. In recapturing those moment Lost Boundaries both deconstructs and foregrounds the means of 16mm film production while weaving together a fragile community of Black artists and actors who came to prominence at a time when debates in film theory - such as those of the Screen film journal and of "third cinema" discourses where cinema was intertwined within (Brechtian) filmmaking practices - were at the forefront of forging a new politics of artistic representation. A Black avant-garde.
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Black Nations/Queer Nations?
Title: Black Nations/Queer Nations?
Character: Self - Panelist
Released: January 1, 1995
Type: Movie
This is an experimental documentary chronicling the March 1995 groundbreaking conference on lesbian and gay sexualities in the African diaspora. The conference brought together an array of dynamic scholars, activists and cultural workers including Essex Hemphill, Kobena Mercer, Barbara Smith, Urvashi Vaid and Jacqui Alexander to interrogate the economic, political and social situations of diasporic lesbians, gay men, bisexual and transgendered peoples. The video brings together the highlights of the conference and draws connections between popular culture and contemporary black gay media production. The participants discuss various topics: Black and queer identity, the shortcomings of Black nationalism, and homophobia in Black communities. Drawing upon works such as Isaac Julien's "The Attendant" and Jocelyn Taylor's "Bodily Functions", this documentary illuminates the importance of this historic conference for Black lesbians and gays.
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Black and White in Colour
Title: Black and White in Colour
Character: Self
Released: June 27, 1992
Type: Movie
A two part documentary that details the contribution of black and Asian people to television history from the birth of television in 1936 to 1992. Interviewees include: Pearl Connor, Thomas Baptiste, Lenny Henry, Norman Beaton, Horace Ové, Carmen Munroe, and Stuart Hall.
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Daddy and the Muscle Academy
Title: Daddy and the Muscle Academy
Character: Himself
Released: October 17, 1991
Type: Movie
Tom of Finland is one of the gay world's few authentic icons. His drawings have had an enormous influence on gay identity. Tom's ultimate leather men are known and seen everywhere. They are symbols of gay pride and friendship. The documentary includes some titillating 'enactments' inspired by Tom's art work.
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This Is Not an AIDS Advertisement
Title: This Is Not an AIDS Advertisement
Released: August 4, 1988
Type: Movie
This highly stylized short asserts sexual desire over fear in gay romantic relationships.
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Reframing AIDS
Title: Reframing AIDS
Character: Himself
Released: January 1, 1987
Type: Movie
Through a series of interviews with leading British AIDS activists and cultural theorists, this documentary investigates the way in which AIDS has been used by the media and by the government to increase state harassment of gay men and lesbians, black people and women. Framing the problem in terms of a left politic, the tape reveals how both homophobia and puritanism have been responsible for the slow government response to AIDS.
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Gay Black Group
Title: Gay Black Group
Character: Self
Released: January 1, 1983
Type: Movie
The formation of the Gay Black Group was a landmark in gay black history. Meeting at Gay's the Word, a bookshop in Bloomsbury, London, it provided a sounding board and support for gay and black communities of the 1980s.