Isaac Julien

Isaac Julien graduated from St. Martin’s School of Art in 1984. He founded Sankofa Film and Video Collective (1983-1992) and Normal Films in 1991. In 2001, he was nominated for the Turner Prize for his film The Long Road to Mazatlán (1999), made in collaboration with Javier de Frutos, and Vagabondia (2000), choreographed by Javier de Frutos. Julien is a recipient of the prestigious MIT Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts (2001) and the Frameline Life Achievement Award (2002). In 2003, he won the Grand Jury Prize at Kunstfilm Biennale in Cologne for his single-screen version of Baltimore. He is a visiting faculty member at the Whitney Museum of American Arts and was a visiting lecturer at Harvard University’s Schools of Afro-American and Visual Environmental Studies. Isaac’s 2008 film Derek, a biopic of Derek Jarman starring Oscar winning actress Tilda Swinton, was critically acclaimed at the Sundance Film Festival.