Spotlight on Isaac Julian

To compliment Juien’s latest film Derek which can be seen in our main programme, the festival is delighted to be screening a selection of his earlier films. A key figure in the British film and video workshop movement of the early 1980s, Isaac Julien is now a leading international film and video artist, producing work for television and art galleries. The politics of sexuality, masculinity and blackness are recurring themes in his work through the distinctive pleasures of the moving image.

Looking for Langston
UK 1989 • 45 mins • beta sp
Salzgeber & Co Medien GmbH
Director: Isaac Julien
Cast: Matthew Baidoo, Akim Mojaji, John Wilson, with the voice of Stuart Hall

In this lyrical and poetic consideration of the life of revered Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes, Julien invokes Hughes as a black gay cultural icon, against an impressionistic, atmospheric setting that parallels a Harlem speakeasy of
the 1920s with an 80s London nightclub.

together with:

The Attendant
UK 1992 • 10 mins • beta sp
Salzgeber & Co Medien GmbH
Director: Isaac Julien

Memory mixes with desire as a museum attendant is caught up in sado-masochistic fantasies inspired by a 19th century painting of slaves in chains, ‘Scenes on a coast of Africa’.

Territories
UK 1984 • 25 mins • dvd
Director: Isaac Julien

An experimental documentary about black culture critiquing the ways traditional media represent black people and portraying the Notting Hill Carnival as an event about resistance.

Some of the films in this programme are available to view at the BFI Mediatheque www.bfi.org.uk/mediatheque

Di / Tue 15.4. • 22:30 • Berlin • Hackesche Höfe FT

for films from britspotting 2000 - 2007 go to our archive