John Wilson
2021Looking for Langston
Isaac Julien
Ben Ellison, Matthew Baidoo
A black and white, fantasy-like recreation of high-society gay men during the Harlem Renaissance, with archival footage and photographs intercut with a story. A wake is going on, with mourners gathered around a coffin. Downstairs is an elegant bar where tuxedoed men dance and talk. One of them has a dream in which he comes upon Beauty, who seems to reject him, although when he awakes, Beauty is sleeping beside him. His story and his visits to the jazz and dance club are framed by voices reading from the poetry and essays of Hughes and others. The text is rarely explicit, but the freedom of gay Black men in the 1920s in Harlem is suggested and celebrated visually.
Looking for Langston
Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask
Isaac Julien
Colin Salmon, Halima Daoud
Explores the life and work of the psychoanalytic theorist and activist Frantz Fanon who was born in Martinique, educated in Paris and worked in Algeria. Examines Fanon's theories of identity and race, and traces his involvement in the anti-colonial struggle in Algeria and throughout the world.
Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask
The Attendant
Isaac Julien
Thomas Baptiste, Cleo Sylvestre
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 called Scene on the coast of Africa. The man remembers his past as a singer and delivers Dido's lament from Purcell's opera.
The Attendant
