Happy Birthday Barry Jenkins!🎈

Is an American Director, Screenwriter & Producer. 

He was born on the 19th of November, 1979 in Miami, Florida, U.S.

Jenkins differed from his classmates at FSU by immersing himself in the work of non American filmmakers such as Wong Kar-wai, Claire Denis, Hou Hsiao-hsien, and the great Lynne Ramsay where I assume his classmates were more Hollywood-centric. 

Saying that! Four days after graduating from FSU, he moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career as a filmmaker but after two years of working on various projects as a production assistant he became totally disillusioned with the Hollywood system. 

Previously he had worried about his ability to actually succeed in the film industry due to his racial and class identity but with his inisial short films he proved himself as a capable filmmaker that could deftly tackle challenging subject matter and use his background and life experience as a strength.  

In 2001 Barry Jenkins made his first of a series of short films called "My Josephine" which follows the romantic life of a young Arabic-speaking man, following the September 11 attacks.

 He followed that up with "Little Brown Boy" (2003) A film about Black children being tried as adults for the deaths of their peers.

Barry Jenkins made his feature film debut in 2008 with... 

Jenkins wrote the film two years prior to its release. Medicine for Melancholy mainly confronts themes of African American assimilation into "hipster" or "indie" culture. 

Barry Jenkins has described the film's two main characters as "playing out a debate back and forth about identity politics". The two lead characters embodies an ideology. Jenkins saw the character of Micah as a man who was always building barriers, whereas Jo thinks that race is a limiter. Accusing Jo of assimilation, Micah strives to reclaim his essential "blackness" as Jo contrastingly claims Micah has a "hang up" about his race and strives to overcome her own.

The film includes the desaturation of images. Filmmakers went through the film shot by shot and pulled out the majority of color. In an interview, director Barry Jenkins stated that certain scenes in the film have more color to reflect when the characters are not thinking about race or housing issues.

The film had its world premiere at South by Southwest on March 7, 2008.

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three and a half out of four stars, calling the actors "effortlessly engaging" and the direction "assured"; he also noted the film was "beautifully photographed".

The film went on to win the Marlon Riggs Award from the San Francisco Film Critics Circle.

Medicine for Melancholy (2008)

is rated 3.3/5 on Letterboxd / 6.6/10 on IMDb / 85% on Rotten Tomatoes 

Barry Jenkins follows his feature film debut with a series of short films.   

One Shot (2009) an 8 min short,

Its single hand-held shot lends both immediacy of viewpoint and a floating unreality to a young woman’s visit to a Seattle convenience store, seemingly fraught with menacing purpose.

A Young Couple (2009) a 13 min short,

A couple discuss their relationship.

Tall Enough (2009) a 7 min short,

Love knows no borders in this stylish snapshot of interracial coupledom. Two Brooklyn photographers (she, African-American; he, Chinese-American) meet and their romance blossoms and endures back home, amidst a poetical widescreen mix of images both seductive and sedate.

Remigration (2011) a 20 min short,

Upon returning to their countryside cabin one day, Kaya, his wife Helen, and their daughter Naomi are confronted by two suited men: representatives of the San Francisco Remigration Program. The men explain that San Francisco is now occupied entirely by the wealthy class. But stoplights still burn out and trains occasionally jump their rails. Blue-collar labor isn’t obsolete, but it’s scarce. The city has created a program to “remigrate” long-gone working class families from their inland homes back to the city that once pushed them out. Kaya, Helen, and Naomi return to San Francisco and join a handful of other potential remigrants for a tour of what can be expected in their new lives. But can they learn to trust their old home once again?

Chlorophyl (2011) a 17 min short film,

The story of a young girl and her fleeting relationship with a scoundrel.

King’s Gym (2013) a 3 min short, 

Oakland, California’s “boxing gym of champions” is showcased here, its historic walls lined with posters for matches boasting past regulars from George Foreman and Joe Frazier to Gina Guidi. Though the crowded environ may be one of sweaty, noisy machismo, director Barry Jenkins’ surprisingly lyrical miniature uses a delicate piano score and slow motion images to enter a contender’s solitary headspace.

In 2016 Jenkins released a truly remarkable film...  

In 2003, Tarell Alvin McCraney wrote the semi-autobiographical play called,

"In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue" to help him cope with and process his mother dying  from AIDS. The theater piece was shelved by McCraney and was not performed or published and sat for about a decade before it was adapted into "Moonlight".

Jenkins found out about McCraney's play through the Borscht arts collective in Miami while he was hunting for inspiration for a second feature film project. 

The play is written in a way where three performers playing the lead character at different stages of his life on stage symontainosy so that the audience would experience a day in the life of the character concurrently. Jenkins wrote his film in three acts, Little, Chiron and Black. 

The film had its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival on September 2, 2016.

The film was released to select theaters on October 21, 2016, before beginning a wide release in North America on November 18, 2016. The film was released on the 17th of February 2017 in the UK. 

It was made for $4 million and went on to gross $65.3 million worldwide. 

Very famously Moonlight won the Best Picture Oscar at the 89th Academy Awards but it was also nominated for seven other awards that night. 

Including Best Director, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress and Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Editing.

The film's editor Joi McMillon became the first black woman to be nominated for an editing Oscar.

The film won three awards on the night, Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay. When Mahershala Ali won for Best Supporting Actor he became the first Muslim to win an acting Oscar.

Moonlight was also the first LGBTQ film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards.

It was also the first LGBTQ-themed mass-marketed feature film with an all-black cast.

The film is rated 4.2/5 on Letterboxd, 7.4/10 on IMDb & 98% on Rotten Tomatoes. 

On July 10, 2017, it was announced that Barry Jenkins would direct an adaptation of James Baldwin's novel "If Beale Street Could Talk".

Jenkins had actually written the screenplay during the summer of 2013 simultaneously with his Oscar winning  Moonlight script.

If Beale Street Could Talk began a limited release in the United States on December 14, 2018

It went on to gross $20.6m at the box office worldwide and was made for $12m. 

The critical consensus around this film is,

"If Beale Street Could Talk honors its source material with a beautifully filmed adaptation that finds director Barry Jenkins further strengthening his visual and narrative craft." 

The film is rated 3.9/5 on Letterboxd, 7.1/10 on IMDb & 95% on Rotten Tomatoes. 

Jenkins next project was the creation and development of the 10 episode mini series,  

The physical railroad element of the plot is fictional and an element of magical realism.

In reality, "The Underground Railroad" was a network of abolitionists who managed hidden routes and safe houses that enabled enslaved African-Americans escape to freedom in the North in the early to mid-1800s.  

The show is rated 4.1/5 on Letterboxd, 7.4/10 on IMDb and 94% It is on Prime Video check it out.

Barry Jenkins is a gifted filmmaker and storyteller that has brought his unique voice to the Hollywood mainstream. I hope Mufasa is a smash hit and he gets a blank cheque to make whatever he wants... fingers crossed he gets to make his Stevie Wonder and time travel movie one day!