#MOONLIGHT BARRY JENKINS MOVIE#

He'd later follow it up with Medicine for Melancholy. He then explored black children being tried as adults for the deaths of their peers in Little Brown Boy. Previously he had fretted over his chances of success due to his racial and class identity, but My Josephine demonstrated that 'I could do the work to make myself as accomplished as anyone else'. Jenkins' first film was his 2001 short My Josephine, which follows the romantic life of a young Arabic-speaking man, following the September 11 attacks. Jenkins at a Q&A for Medicine for Melancholy at the Northwest Film Forum in 2009 He became disillusioned with 'Hollywood film-making' after working for Harpo Productions, an experience which contrasted with his time studying film, reflecting that 'At school, film-making had been the most beautiful thing that ever happened to me'. Four days after graduating from FSU, he moved to Los Angeles to pursue a filmmaking career, spending two years working on various projects as a production assistant. While at Florida State, Jenkins became a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity. To resolve his personal misgivings he looked towards foreign arthouse cinema, in a divergence from the inspirations of his classmates, such as Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Wes Anderson. Jenkins felt a general lack of confidence at the start of the programme, which began for Jenkins in a spontaneous manner. Feeling inadequate in regards to his technological skillmanship, Jenkins took a year off to advance it. His decision to study there was instigated by an initial visit: 'I thought: This is the blackest place in America. Jenkins studied film at the Florida State University College of Motion Picture Arts (FSU), where he met many of his future frequent collaborators, including cinematographer James Laxton, producer Adele Romanski and editors Nat Sanders and Joi McMillon. He hoped to pursue a creative-writing degree.

His disordered and lonely childhood led him to retreat inwards and develop an active imagination. As a teenager Jenkins lived with friends from Miami Northwestern Senior High School, at which he played football and ran track. Jenkins grew up in Liberty City, a neighborhood of Miami, and was primarily raised by another older woman (who had also looked after his mother while she was a teenager) in an overcrowded apartment: 'I wasn’t raised by anyone who was a blood relative of mine, and yet I could see my blood relatives all around the neighborhood because things were just so, so bad'. His mother, a nurse, suffered from a crack-cocaine addiction, and was a teenage runaway whom Jenkins has said abandoned him. 'I don't think any of us were planned, but I was definitely a mistake', he had later said. Jenkins, in later life, still has 'no idea who my 'real' father is'. His father separated from his mother while she was pregnant with Jenkins, believing that he was not Jenkins's father he died when Jenkins was 12. Jenkins was born in 1979 at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, Florida, the youngest of four siblings, each from a different father. In 2017, Jenkins was included on the annual Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world.

#MOONLIGHT BARRY JENKINS MOVIE#

In 2021, he directed the Amazon Video limited series The Underground Railroad based on the novel of the same name and received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Limited Series or Movie nomination. Jenkins directed 'Chapter V' of the Netflix series Dear White People in 2017. He is also known for his work in television. He released his third directorial feature If Beale Street Could Talk in 2018 to critical praise, and earned nominations for his screenplay at the Academy Awards and Golden Globes. He became the fourth black person to be nominated for Best Director and the second black person to direct a Best Picture winner. Jenkins received an Oscar nomination for Best Director and jointly won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay with Tarell Alvin McCraney. He is also a member of The Chopstars collective as a creative collaborator.įollowing an eight-year hiatus from feature filmmaking, Jenkins directed and co-wrote the LGBT-themed independent drama Moonlight (2016), which won numerous accolades, including the Academy Award for Best Picture. After making his filmmaking debut with the short film My Josephine (2003), he directed his first feature film Medicine for Melancholy (2008) for which he received an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best First Feature. Barry Jenkins (born November 19, 1979) is an American filmmaker.

Moonlight barry jenkins