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.

Filmography

• 2025Once Again... (Statues Never Die) — Director
• 2022Once Again... (Statues Never Die) — Director, Writer
• 2021Encore No.1 Paradise Omeros — Director
• 201930/30 Vision: Three Decades of Strand Releasing — Director
• 2019Kill Your TV: Jim Moir’s Weird World of Video Art
• 2019Lessons of the Hour — Director
• 2019Lina Bo Bardi — A Marvelous Entanglement — Director, Screenplay
• 2013Playtime — Director
• 2010Ten Thousand Waves — Director
• 2008Derek — Director, Executive Producer
• 2007Western Union: Small Boats — Director
• 2005Fantôme Afrique — Director
• 2005Fantôme Creole — Director
• 2005Portrait in Blue: Essex Hemphill — Director
• 2004Encore II (Radioactive) — Director
• 2004True North — Director
• 2003Baltimore — Director
• 2003Lost Boundaries — Director
• 2002BaadAsssss Cinema — Director
• 2002Paradise Omeros — Director, Writer
• 2000Three — Director
• 2000Vagabondia — Director
• 1999Long Road to Mazatlán — Director
• 1996Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask — Director, Screenplay
• 1994The Darker Side of Black — Director
• 1993Significant (Br)other — Novel
• 1993The Attendant — Director
• 1992Black and White in Colour — Self, Director
• 1991Young Soul Rebels — Director, Writer
• 1989Dreaming Rivers — Assistant Director
• 1989Looking for Langston — Director, Screenplay
• 1988This Is Not an AIDS Advertisement — Director, Producer
• 1986The Passion of Remembrance — Director, Writer
• 1984Territories — Director
• 1983Who Killed Colin Roach? — Director

Appearances as themselves (6)

• 2024Scala!!! — Self
• 2017Queer as Art — Self
• 1995Black Nations/Queer Nations? — Self - Panelist
• 1991Daddy and the Muscle Academy — Himself
• 1987Reframing AIDS — Himself
• 1983Gay Black Group — Self