Description:

Young Soul Rebels
(Isaac Julien, 1991, UK, 35mm, 105 min.)
After a decade making experimental film and video as part of the Sankofa collective, Isaac Julien took a detour into narrative feature filmmaking in 1990 with Young Soul Rebels, a vibrant and intersectional portrait of late-70s British musical subculture. Following Chris and Caz, two pirate-radio soul DJs who stumble upon a tape documenting the murder of one of their listeners, Young Soul Rebels daringly tackles issues of race, class, sexuality and violence during a period of social upheaval in the UK; it’s also saturated with incredible music, fashion and period detail. An essential entry in the “New Queer Cinema” of the early 1990s, Young Soul Rebels remains one of Julien’s most accessible and personal films.

With an introduction by Adrian Johns, Professor of History at the University of Chicago.