Mellon Annual Distinguished Lecture
in the Humanities
Presented by the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute, Duke University
With Support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Featuring Filmmaker and Artist
Isaac Julien
London, England
**For full schedule of events, click here**
DURHAM, NC The John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke University will host internationally acclaimed British filmmaker and visual artist Isaac Julien as its Mellon Annual Distinguished Lecturer in the Humanities, February 9-10, 2006.
Julien will deliver a major public lecture, entitled "Somewhere Else: Theorizing the Making of True North, Fantôme Afrique, and Baltimore," at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, February 9, 2006, at the Nasher Museum of Art , at 2001 Campus Drive on the Duke University campus. Accompanying the lecture will be a screening of the three short films. On February 10 at 4:00 p.m. at Duke's Center for Documentary Studies , Julien will screen several additional films and participate in a discussion with members of Duke's faculty.
Julien's visit will be preceded in January and early February by a retrospective of his longer films, including Looking for Langston (1989), BaadAssss Cinema (2002), Young Soul Rebels (1991) and Frantz Fanon, Black Skin White Mask (1996). The film series is co-organized by Screen/Society and screenings will take place at the Griffith Film Theater in the Bryan Center on the Duke Campus.
A complete schedule of events is below. All events are free and open to the public.
About Isaac Julien
A key figure in the film and video workshop movement of the early 1980s, Isaac Julien is now a leading international film and video artist, producing work for cinema, television and art galleries. Many of his works engage themes of race, sexuality, and masculinity. Julien came to prominence in 1989 with his drama-documentary Looking for Langston , a poetic exploration of Langston Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance.
In 1991, his Young Soul Rebels won the Semaine de la Critique prize for best film at the Cannes Film Festival. The film examines the tensions between politics and pleasure for Julien's generation of British-born blacks and celebrates that generation's contribution to an interracial, music-oriented youth culture.
Isaac Julien was born, lives, and works in London. After graduation from St. Martin's School of Art in 1984, he founded Sankofa Film and Video Collective, an organization dedicated to developing an independent black film culture in the areas of production, exhibition and audience. He was also a founding member of Normal Films in 1999.
In the early 1990s, Julien worked mainly in television and music video. More recently he has moved into gallery and museum-based work, with installation pieces including Trussed (1996); The Conservator's Dream (1999); Vagabondia (2000); and The Long Road to Mazatlan (1999), which was shortlisted for the U.K.'s prestigious Turner Prize in 2001. In 2003 Julien won the Grand Jury Prize at the Kunstfilm Biennale in Cologne for his single screen version of Baltimore . Julien has also been a visiting lecturer at Harvard University, the Whitney Museum of American Arts Independent Study Programme, and Goldsmiths College, London.
"Isaac Julien's work brings the perfect meeting of the humanities with the arts, said Franklin Humanities Institute Director Srinivas Aravamudan. He manages to be poetically fanciful as well as historically accurate at the same time, theoretically astute as well as broadly accessible. His ability to evoke complex and controversial ideas through a generous and probing sensibility makes him my favorite documentarian, artist, and theoretician reflecting on the complex histories and legacies of black diasporic culture in the world today."
These events are made possible by support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Additional support has been provided by Duke University’s Office of the President, Office of the Dean of Humanities, the Nasher Museum of Art, the John Hope Franklin Center for Interdisciplinary and International Studies, the Department of Art and Art History, the Center for Documentary Studies, and the Program in Film/Video/Digital.
About the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute
Founded in 1999, the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute is an interdisciplinary humanities center dedicated to supporting research and teaching in the humanities, arts, and interpretive social sciences at Duke. Through an array of programs engaging faculty, staff, students, and the public, the Institute nurtures serious humanistic inquiry and advocates for the centrality of the humanities to the quality of human life and social interaction. Inspired by the example of John Hope Franklin, James B. Duke Professor Emeritus of History, the Institute also promotes scholarship that enhances social equity, especially research on race and ethnicity in their most profound historical and international dimensions.
Since 2003, the Institute has been directed by Srinivas Aravamudan, Associate Professor of English at Duke. Under his leadership, the Institute has engaged in discussions of dissent and the risks inherent in the production and dissemination of knowledge and has helped Duke initiate a partnership with the international Scholars at Risk Network, through which universities provide temporary asylum to endangered academics.
For more information on the Institute's programs, please visit our home page or phone (919) 668-1902.
Program Schedule
Somewhere Else: Theorizing the Making of True North, Fantôme Afrique, and Baltimore
Public Lecture and Film Screening
Presented by the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute with Support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Thursday, February 9, 2006, 5:30 pm
Nasher Museum of Art Auditorium
2001 Campus Drive, Duke University
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From Theater to Gallery: Isaac Julien's Short Films
Screening and Conversation with Isaac Julien and Duke Faculty
Presented in partnership with the Center for Documentary Studies
Friday, February 10, 2006, 4:00 - 6:00 p.m.
Center for Documentary Studies, Duke University
1317 W. Pettigrew Street, Durham
A screening of Julien's short films and installations, including Vagabondia , Paradise Omeros , Long Road to Mazatlan, and Three . Followed by a discussion with the artist featuring Duke faculty members Ranjana Khanna (English, Literature, and Women's Studies), Wahneema Lubiano (Literature and African and African American Studies), Sean Metzger (English and Theater Studies), Mark Anthony Neal (African and African American Studies), Kristine Stiles (Art and Art History), and Maurice Wallace (Literature and African and African American Studies). A reception will follow the program.
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Film Series: Isaac Julien Retrospective
Presented in Partnership with Screen/Society
All films begin at 8:00 pm in Griffith Film Theater, Bryan Center, Duke University
Tuesday, January 17, 2006, 8:00 PM
Looking for Langston (1989, 40 min.)
The private world of the black artists and writers such as Langston Hughes who formed the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s is recreated in a mythic dimension. The film switches from archive footage to a stylized version of the jazz and blues infected Harlem to explore questions of black beauty within queer desire.
BaadAsssss Cinema (2002, 56 min.)
Isaac Julien's documentary examines the short-lived, but deeply influential, flourishing of commercial Black independent filmmaking in the early 1970s which became known as "blaxploitation." Filled with fragments and contributions from luminaries of the time, including actors Pam Grier and Fred Williamson, directors Melvin Van Peebles and Gordon Parks Jr., contemporary fans Quentin Tarantino and Samuel L. Jackson, and critics like bell hooks, the documentary sets the films of the period in their context and asks a series of questions. Did 70s hits such as Sweet Sweetback's BaadAssss Song and Shaft provide "revolutionary" or retrograde images of American blacks? Why was it that "blaxploitation" films, having helped save a declining Hollywood, then became marginalized? Julien follows the genre from its beginnings through Quentin Tarantino's 1997 homage, Jackie Brown .
Introduced by Sean Metzger , Assistant Professor of English and Theater Studies, Duke University.
Monday, January 30, 2006, 8:00 PM
Young Soul Rebels (1991, 101 min.)
Set in 1977, during the week of the Queen's Silver Jubilee. Together with his partner Caz, Chris, a young black London DJ, runs pirate radio station Soul Patrol from an East End garage. When a mutual friend is murdered while cruising in a London park, Chris is arrested for the murder. With Valentine Nonyela and Mo Sesay. Introduced by Mark Anthony Neal , Associate Professor, Black Popular Culture, Program in African and African American Studies, Duke University.
Monday, February 6, 2006, 8:00 PM
Frantz Fanon, Black Skin White Mask (1996, 73 min.)
Interviews, reconstructions and archival footage tell the story of the life and work of the highly influential anti-colonialist writer Franz Fanon, author of Black Skin, White Mask and The Wretched of the Earth , and his professional life as a psychiatric doctor in Algeria during its war of independence with France. Introduced by Ranjana Khanna , Associate Professor of English, Literature, and Women's Studies, Duke University; and Maurice Wallace , Associate Professor of English and African & African American Studies, Duke University.
Parking for the lecture is available in the Nasher Museum lot ($2/hr.) or the Sarah P. Duke Gardens lot (free after 5:00 p.m.). Parking for the film series is available in the Bryan Center Parking Deck off Science Drive. Parking for the Center for Documentary Studies is along Pettigrew Street.
These events are made possible by support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Additional support has been provided by Duke University’s Office of the President, Office of the Dean of Humanities, the Nasher Museum of Art, the John Hope Franklin Center for Interdisciplinary and International Studies, the Department of Art and Art History, the Center for Documentary Studies, the Program in Film/Video/Digital, and Screen/Society.