Isaac Julien

Isaac Julien was born in 1960 in London, where he currently lives and works. On graduating from St Martin’s School of Art in 1984, where he studied painting and fine art film, Isaac Julien founded Sankofa Film and Video Collective, and was a founder member of Normal Films in 1999.

Julien was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2001 for his films The Long Road to Mazatlan (1999), made in collaboration with Javier de Frutos and Vagabondia (2000), choreographed by Javier de Frutos. Earlier works include Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask (1996), the Cannes prize-winning Young Soul Rebels (1991) and the acclaimed poetic documentary Looking for Langston (1989).

Isaac Julien is currently visiting lecturer at Harvard University’s Schools of Afro-American and Visual Environmental Studies and the Whitney Museum of American Arts’ Independent Study Programme. He is research fellow at Goldsmiths University of London and a Trustee of the Serpentine Gallery. In 2001 Julien was the recipient of the prestigious MIT Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts. In 2003 he won the Grand Jury Prize at the Kunstfilm Biennale in Cologne for his single screen version of Baltimore.