Isaac Julien

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. Renowned choreographer and dancer Stephen Galloway (Ballet Frankfurt) and actor Vanessa Myrie (Baltimore) figure as ‘trickster/phantom’ and ‘witness’ in this carefully composed meditation on the denationalised, de-territorialised spaces born of the encounters between local and global cultures, where the ghosts of history linger amid the realities of the day

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.

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.

With archive film clips and interviews, this brief look at a frequently overlooked historical period of filmmaking acts as an introduction rather than a complete record. It features interviews with some of the genre's biggest stars, like Fred Williamson, Pam Grier, and Richard Roundtree. Director Melvin Van Peebles discusses the historical importance of his landmark film Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song. For a contemporary perspective, the excitable Quentin Tarantino offers his spirited commentary and author/critic bell hooks provides some scholarly social analysis.

Territories is an experimental documentary about the Notting Hill Carnival. It locates the event within the struggle between white authority and black youth, in this case over the contested spaces of the carnival, and reflects on its history as symbolic act of resistance. The film makes the case using montage: cutting carnival scenes with archive news reports - police surveillance to rioting in the street - and crossing looks of desire with alienation, from police to reveller, woman to man, man to man. Add to this a disembodied, political critique and trenchant images of police violence and the audience soon becomes aware that the documentary itself is part of the resistance.

Derek, in chronological order, records the work and life that stands at the foot of Derek Jarman's humour and spirit of being an artist. The filmmaker and actress, Isaac Julien and Tilda Swinton respectively, have produced and narrated a film on his life whereby the use of language is perpetuated to give some type of palpable meaning to British audiences alone, and to their own personal relationship with him.

Playtime’s cosmopolitan spectacle, presented in a kaleidoscopic montage across seven large screens, interconnects the lives of its archetypical characters—hedge fund managers and art world players in London; a photographer in Reykjavik; and a Filipina houseworker in Dubai—each of whom is based on a real-life individual directly affected by the market collapse.

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.

Over 30 filmmakers and friends of Strand Releasing have come together to honor the company’s indelible contribution to independent cinema over the past thirty years. The participating filmmakers have each created a short film for the project, all shot on iPhones.

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).

TEN THOUSAND WAVES is a 9-screen installation shot on location in China. The work poetically weaves together stories linking China’s ancient past and present. Through an architectural installation, the work explores the movement of people across countries and continents and meditates on unfinished journeys. Conceived and made over four years, TEN THOUSAND WAVES sees Julien collaborating with some of China’s leading artistic voices, including the legendary siren of Chinese cinema Maggie Cheung; rising star of Chinese film Zhao Tao; poet Wang Ping; master calligrapher Gong Fagen; artist Yang Fudong; acclaimed cinematographer Zhao Xiaoshi; and a 100-strong Chinese cast and crew. The film’s original musical score is by fellow East Londoner Jah Wobble and The Chinese Dub Orchestra and contemporary classical composer Maria de Alvear.

Co-directed by Blackwood and Julien, the first full-length feature film by Sankofa Film and Video offers a radical and necessary interrogation into what constitutes 'post-colonial' identity at a time of political and social restlessness in Britain. Set within an isolated desert landscape contrasted with recognizable scenes of the intensity of family life, this vanguard work demonstrates the richness and variety of the black experience; it is a poetic and hard-hitting commentary on the complexities of race, gender and sexuality.

Baltimore deals with the cinematization of video art, on the one hand, and a queering and racing of the museum, on the other. The film installation works as an intervention that attempts to address the creolising vision in the space of the gallery.

An experimental dance piece revealing the complex dynamics between two dancers and another woman.

Two disc jockeys have a friend's murder to solve in the fringe-group melting pot of 1977 London.

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 hierarchical as well as in the struggling figure we find a succinct metaphor of endless traversing, symbolizing the voyage of the modern that has to be experienced by others.

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 where the statues also dream and the vagabond spirit of colonialism's repressed memory comes dancing, jerkily, back to life. Choreography by Javier De Frutos. 7', two-screen installation, 16mm film transferred to digital, colour, sound.

Fantôme Créole is a four-screen film installation that juxtaposes Arctic and African landscapes as it combines two films: True North, filmed in the Artic landscapes of Iceland, and Fantôme Afrique, filmed in Burkina Faso. Fantôme Créole juxtaposes Arctic and African landscapes as it combines two films: True North (2004), loosely based on the story of black explorer Matthew Henson (1866-1955), who accompanied Robert Peary in a pioneering expedition to the North Pole; and Fantôme Afrique (2005), shot in Burkina Faso.

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.

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.