Loosely inspired by the story of the black American explorer, Matthew Henson (1866-1955) who accompanied Robert Peary and was one of the first people to reach the North Pole, later writing an account of his experience. In this fragmented narrative, Julien contemplates on ideas and histories of the...
Who Killed Colin Roach? is Isaac Julien's first film, which reflects upon the death of Colin Roach, a 23 year old who was shot at the entrance of a police station in East London, in 1982. Even though the police claimed Roach had commited suicide, evidence showed otherwise. Isaac Julien says that...
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.
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.
Erotic images of Black men with voice over text by Isaac Julien and Kobena Mercer question the objectification of the Black male image by white photographers.
The multiple screen installation and photographic series A Marvellous Entanglement (2019) traverses a collection of Lina Bo Bardi’s most iconic buildings, offering a meditation on the work and legacy of the visionary modernist architect and designer (1914–1992).
Paradise Omeros delves into the fantasies and feelings of "creoleness" - the mixed language, the hybrid mental states and the territorial transpositions that arise when one lives in multiple cultures.
The film explores the storied relationship between Dr Albert C. Barnes, an early US collector and exhibitor of African cultural artefacts, and the renowned philosopher and cultural critic Alain Locke, known as the “Father of the Harlem Renaissance”.
Encore II (Radioactive) is a short film study inspired by a character from the writings of Octavia Butler, an African American science fiction writer, best known for her recurring exploration of genetic manipulation, contamination and hybridity and David Bowie’s Starman. The film re-digitises...
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,...
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.
Fantôme Afrique, weaves cinematic and architectural references through the rich imagery of urban Ouagadougou, the centre for cinema in Africa, and the arid spaces of rural Burkina Faso, and is punctuated by archival footage from early colonial expeditions and landmark moments in African history....
An exploration of the homophobia expressed by reggae and rap artists againts gays and lesbians. Inludes interviews with rappers Shabba Ranks and Buju Banton, who cite religious reasons for their particular brand of homophobia.
Isaac Julien’s 2007 multi-screen installation Western Union Small Boats is a work where individual voyages, journeys and travel are explored locally, in order to allude to the global scenario.
A black female conservator imagines the buried stories and the hidden histories within the museum's cornucopia of colonial plunder. Filmed with fluid camera movements and a sensuous attention to lighting-camera work, Julien makes of the museum a world of shadows, mirrors and frames-within-frames...
Shot in Texas, Isaac Julien's Turner Prize nominated film installation Long Road to Mazatlán reflects upon the construction of masculinity through a choreographed mise-en-scène.
